
MODERN 
AMERICAN 

PROSE 
SELECTIONS 

BYRON J. REES 






Class L__._ 

Book 

GopyrightN? 

CfiWRIGRT DEPOSJE 



MODERN 

AMERICAN PROSE 

SELECTIONS 



EDITED BY 

BYRON JOHNSON REES 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE 




NEW YORK 

HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE 

1920 



COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY 
HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC. 



THE-PLIMPTON'PEESS 
NORWOOD-MASS- U. S. A. 



©CIA571315 



-. j 



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CONTENTS 



Preface 

Acknowledgments 

Abraham Lincoln Theodore Roosevelt 

American Tradition .... Franklin K. Lane . 

America's Heritage .... Franklin K. Lane . . 

Address at the College of the Holy 

Cross Calvin Coolidge . . 

Our Future Immigration Policy . Frederic C. Howe . . 

A New Relationship between Capi- 
tal and Labor John D. Rockefeller, Jr. 

My Uncle Alvin Johnson . 

When a Man Comes to Himself . Woodrow Wilson . 

Education through Occupations . William Lowe Bryan . 

The Fallow John Agricola 

Writing and Reading .... John Matthews Manly and 

Edith Rickert . . 

James Russell Lowell . . . Bliss Perry .... 

The Education of Henry Adams . Carl Becker .... 

The Struggle for an Education . Booker T. Washington 

Entering Journalism .... Jacob A. Riis . 

Bound Coastwise Ralph D. Paine 

The Democratization of the Auto- 
mobile Burton J. Hendrick 

Traveling Afoot John Finley .... 

Old Boats Walter Prichard Eaton 

Zeppelinitis Philip Lit tell 



PAGE 

vii 
xi 

3 
8 

17 



25 

31 
42 

53 
68 
81 

87 
94 
109 
119 
128 
135 

145 
157 
165 
177 



TO 
E., C, AND H. 

STUDENTS AND FRIENDS 



JUN 17 1920 



PREFACE 

As the reader, if he wishes, may discover without undue 
delay, the little volume of modern prose selections that 
he has before him is the result of no ambitious or pre- 
tentious design. It is not a collection of the best things 
that have lately been known and thought in the American 
world; it is not an anthology in which "all our best 
authors" are represented by striking or celebrated pas- 
sages. The editor planned nothing either so precious or 
so eclectic. His purpose rather was to bring together 
some twenty examples of typical contemporary prose, in 
which writers who know whereof they write discuss 
certain present-day themes in readable fashion. In 
choosing material he has sought to include nothing merely 
because of the name of the author, and he has demanded 
of each selection that it should be of such a character, 
both in subject and style, as to impress normal and 
wholesome Americans as well worth reading. 

The earlier selections — President Roosevelt's noble 
eulogy upon Lincoln, Secretary Lane's two addresses on 
American tradition and heritage, and Governor Coolidge's 
address at Holy Cross — remind the reader of the high 
significance of our national past and indicate the promise 
of a rightly apprehended future. There follow two 
articles — "Our Future Immigration Policy," by Com- 
missioner Frederic C. Howe, and "A New Relationship 
between Capital and Labor," by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, 
Jr. — on subjects that press for earnest consideration on 
the part of all who are intent upon the solution of our 



viii PREFACE 

problems. Mr. Alvin Johnson's playful yet serious essay 
on "the biggest, kindliest, most honest and honorable 
tribal head that ever lived" completes the group of what 
may be termed "Americanization" Papers. 

Perhaps the best of the many magazine articles that 
President Wilson has written is that which serves as a 
link — for those to whom links, even in a miscellany, are 
a satisfaction — between the earlier selections and those 
that follow. "When a Man Comes to Himself," express- 
ing as it does in English of distinction the best thought 
of the best Americans concerning the individual's rela- 
tion to society and to the state, will probably be widely 
read, with attention and gratitude, for many years to 
come. Associated with Mr. Wilson's article are three 
selections presenting various aspects of self-realization in 
education. One of them, "The Fallow," deals in signally 
happy manner with the insistent and vital question of 
the study of the Classics. 

That scholarly and competent literary criticism need 
not be dull or deficient in charm is obvious from an 
examination of Mr. Bliss Perry's masterly study of James 
Russell Lowell and Mr. Carl Becker's subtle and dis- 
criminating analysis of The Education of Henry Adams. 
Both writers attack subjects of considerable complexity 
and difficulty, and both succeed in clarifying the thought 
of the discerning reader and inducing in him an exhilarat- 
ing sense of mental and spiritual enlargement. 

From the many notable autobiographies that have 
appeared during recent years the editor has chosen two 
from which to reprint brief passages. The first is 
Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery, the simple and 
straightforward personal narrative of one whom all must 
now concede to have been a very great man; the other 
is that human and poignant epic of the stranger from 
Denmark who became one of us and of whom we as 



PREFACE ix 

a people are tenderly proud. The Making of an Amer- 
ican is in some ways a unique book; concrete, specific, 
self-revealing and yet dignified; a book that one could 
wish that every American might know. 

Also concrete and specific are the chapters from Mr. 
Ralph D. Paine and Mr. Burton J. Hendrick. In "Bound 
Coastwise" Mr. Paine has treated, with knowledge, sym- 
pathy, and imagination, an important phase of our com- 
mercial life. As an example of narrative-exposition, 
matter-of-fact yet touched with the romance of those who 
"go down to the sea in ships," the excerpt is thoroughly 
admirable. Mr. Hendrick, in entertaining and profitable 
wise, tells the story of what he considers "probably 
America's greatest manufacturing exploit." 

Dr. Finley "starts the imagination out upon the road" 
and "invites to the open spaces," especially to those 
undisturbed by "the flying automobile." "Walking," he 
says eagerly, "is not only a joy in itself, but it gives 
an intimacy with the sacred things and the primal things 
of earth that are not revealed to those who rush by on 
wheels." 

In "Old Boats" Mr. Walter Prichard Eaton, in a 
manner of writing that has of late years won him a 
large place in the hearts of readers, thoughtfully contem- 
plates the abandoned farmhouse, and lingers wistfully be- 
side the beached and crumbling craft of the "unplumb'd, 
salt, estranging sea." Few can read, or, better, hear 
read, his closing paragraph without thrilling to that "other 
harmony of prose." That such a cadenced and haunting 
passage should have been published as recently as 191 7 
should assure the doubter that there is still amongst us 
a taste for the beautiful. "I live inland now, far from 
the smell of salt water and the sight of sails. Yet some- 
times there comes over me a longing for the sea as 
irresistible as the lust for salt which stampedes the 



x PREFACE 

reindeer of the north. I must gaze on the unbroken 
world-rim, I must feel the sting of spray, I must hear the 
rhythmic crash and roar of breakers and watch the 
sea-weed rise and fall where the green waves lift against 
the rocks. Once in so often I must ride those waves with 
cleated sheet and tugging tiller, and hear the soft hissing 
song of the water on the rail. And 'my day of mercy' 
is not complete till I have seen some old boat, her 
seafaring done, heeled over on the beach or amid the 
fragrant sedges, a mute and wistful witness to the ro- 
mance of the deep, the blue and restless deep where 
man has adventured in craft his hands have made since 
the earliest sun of history, and whereon he will adven- 
ture, ardently and insecure, till the last syllable of 
recorded time." 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

The editor's thanks are due to the holders of copyrights 
who have generously permitted him to include selections 
from books and magazines published by them. More 
particularly he would express his gratitude to the Yale 
University Press, to Harper and Brothers, to Henry 
Holt and Co., to Doubleday, Page and Co., to the 
Macmillan Company, to the Century Company, to 
the Frederick A. Stokes Company, to the P. F. Collier 
and Son Company, to the Houghton Mifflin Company, to 
the Outlook Company, to the Indiana University Book- 
store, to the editor of the Harvard Graduates' Magazine, 
to the editors of the American Historical Review, and to 
Harcourt, Brace and Howe. Specific indications as to 
the extent of the editor's borrowing will be found with 
the selections. 

Authors from whose work the editor has wished to 
quote have been invariably gracious. To President Wil- 
son for his essay "When a Man Comes to Himself," to 
Governor Coolidge for his Holy Cross College address, 
to Secretary Lane for two addresses, and to Commissioner 
Howe for his article on immigration, he would express his 
gratitude. President John Finley, Mr. Walter Prichard 
Eaton, Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., President W. L. 
Bryan, Mr. Alvin Johnson, Mr. John Matthews Manly, 
Miss Edith Rickert, Mr. Carl Becker, Mr. Ralph D. 
Paine, Mr. Burton J. Hendrick, Mr. Philip Littell, and 
Mr. Bliss Perry have freely accorded permission to re- 
print the selections that bear their names. Mrs. Jacob 



xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

A. Riis and Mr. R. W. Riis have courteously granted 
the use of the excerpt from The Making of an American. 
The editors of The New Republic and the editors of The 
University of Virginia Alumni Bulletin have kindly con- 
sented to the reprinting of articles that originally ap- 
peared in their periodicals. To Mr. Will D. Howe, whose 
assistance has been constant and invaluable, the editor 
would extend his hearty thanks. 



MODERN AMERICAN PROSE 
SELECTIONS 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 1 

Theodore Roosevelt 

We have met here to celebrate the hundredth anniver- 
sary of the birth of one of the two greatest Americans; of 
one of the two or three greatest men of the nineteenth 
century; of one of the greatest men in the world's his- 
tory. This rail-splitter, this boy who passed his un- 
gainly youth in the dire poverty of the poorest of the 
frontier folk, whose rise was by weary and painful 
labor, lived to lead his people through the burning 
flames of a struggle from which the nation emerged, 
purified as by fire, born anew to a loftier life. 

After long years of iron effort, and of failure that came 
more often than victory, he at last rose to the leader- 
ship of the Republic, at the moment when that leader- 
ship had become the stupendous world-task of the time. 
He grew to know greatness, but never ease. Success 
came to him, but never happiness, save that which 
springs from doing well a painful and a vital task. 
Power was his, but not pleasure. The furrows deep- 
ened on his brow, but his eyes were undimmed by either 
hate or fear. His gaunt shoulders were bowed, but his 
steel thews never faltered as he bore for a burden the 
destinies of his people. His great and tender heart 
shrank from giving pain; and the task allotted him 
was to pour out like water the life-blood of the young 

1 Address delivered at Lincoln's birthplace, Hodgenville, Ky., 
Feb. 12, 1909. Reprinted from Collier's Weekly, issue of Feb. 13, 
1909. By permission. Copyright, 1909, P. F. Collier & Son Co. 

3 



4 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

men, and to feel in his every fibre the sorrow of the 
women. Disaster saddened but never dismayed him. 

As the red years of war went by they found him ever 
doing his duty in the present, ever facing the future 
with fearless front, high of heart, and dauntless of soul. 
Unbroken by hatred, unshaken by scorn, he worked 
and suffered for the people. Triumph was his at the 
last; and barely had he tasted it before murder found 
him, and the kindly, patient, fearless eyes were closed 
forever. 

As a people we are indeed beyond measure fortunate 
in the characters of the two greatest of our public men, 
Washington and Lincoln. Widely though they differed 
in externals, the Virginia landed gentleman and the Ken- 
tucky backwoodsman, they were alike in essentials, they 
were alike in the great qualities which made each able 
to do service to his nation and to all mankind such as 
no other man of his generation could or did render. 
Each had lofty ideals, but each in striving to attain these 
lofty ideals was guided by the soundest common sense. 
Each possessed inflexible courage in adversity, and a 
soul wholly unspoiled by prosperity. Each possessed all 
the gentler virtues commonly exhibited by good men 
who lack rugged strength of character. Each possessed 
also all the strong qualities commonly exhibited by those 
towering masters of mankind who have too often shown 
themselves devoid of so much as the understanding of 
the words by which we signify the qualities of duty, of 
mercy, of devotion to the right, of lofty disinterestedness 
in battling for the good of others. 

There have been other men as great and other men as 
good; but in all the history of mankind there are no 
other two great men as good as these, no other two good 
men as great. Widely though the problems of to-day 
differ from the problems set for solution to Washington 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 5 

when he founded this nation, to Lincoln when he saved 
it and freed the slave, yet the qualities they showed in 
meeting these problems are exactly the same as those 
we should show in doing our work to-day. 

Lincoln saw into the future with the prophetic imagi- 
nation usually vouchsafed only to the poet and the seer. 
He had in him all the lift toward greatness of the vision- 
ary, without any of the visionary's fanaticism or egotism, 
without any of the visionary's narrow jealousy of the 
practical man and inability to strive in practical fashion 
for the realization of an ideal. He had the practical 
man's hard common sense and willingness to adapt means 
to ends; but there was in him none of that morbid 
growth of mind and soul which blinds so many practical 
men to the higher aims of life. No more practical man 
ever lived than this homely backwoods idealist; but he 
had nothing in common with those practical men whose 
consciences are warped until they fail to distinguish be- 
tween good and evil, fail to understand that strength, 
ability, shrewdness, whether in the world of business or 
of politics, only serve to make their possessor a more 
noxious, a more evil, member of the community if they 
are not guided and controlled by a fine and high moral 
sense. 

We of this day must try to solve many social and in- 
dustrial problems, requiring to an especial degree the 
combination of indomitable resolution with cool-headed 
sanity. We can profit by the way in which Lincoln 
used both these traits as he strove for reform. We can 
learn much of value from the very attacks which follow- 
ing that course brought upon his head, attacks alike by 
the extremists of revolution and by the extremists of 
reaction. He never wavered in devotion to his princi- 
ples, in his love for the Union, and in his abhorrence 
of slavery. Timid and lukewarm people were always 



6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

denouncing him because he was too extreme; but as a 
matter of fact he never went to extremes, he worked step 
by step; and because of this the extremists hated and 
denounced him with a fervor which now seems to us fan- 
tastic in its deification of the unreal and the impossible. 
At the very time when one side was holding him up as 
the apostle of social revolution because he was against 
slavery, the leading abolitionist denounced him as the 
"slave hound of Illinois." When he was the second time 
candidate for President, the majority of his opponents 
attacked him because of what they termed his extreme 
radicalism, while a minority threatened to bolt his nom- 
ination because he was not radical enough. He had con- 
tinually to check those who wished to go forward too 
fast, at the very time that he overrode the opposition 
of those who wished not to go forward at all. The goal 
was never dim before his vision; but he picked his way 
cautiously, without either halt or hurry, as he strode 
toward it, through such a morass of difficulty that no 
man of less courage would have attempted it, while it 
would surely have overwhelmed any man of judgment 
less serene. 

Yet perhaps the most wonderful thing of all, and, 
from the standpoint of the America of to-day and of the 
future, the most vitally important, was the extraordinary 
way in which Lincoln could fight valiantly against what 
he deemed wrong and yet preserve undiminished his love 
and respect for the brother from whom he differed. In 
the hour of a triumph that would have turned any 
weaker man's head, in the heat of a struggle which 
spurred many a good man to dreadful vindictiveness, he 
said truthfully that so long as he had been in his office 
he had never willingly planted a thorn in any man's 
bosom, and besought his supporters to study the inci- 
dents of the trial through which they were passing as 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 7 

philosophy from which to learn wisdom and not as 
wrongs to be avenged; ending with the solemn exhorta- 
tion that, as the strife was over, all should reunite in a 
common effort to save their common country. 

He lived in days that were great and terrible, when 
brother fought against brother for what each sincerely 
deemed to be the right. In a contest so grim the strong 
men who alone can carry it through are rarely able to do 
justice to the deep convictions of those with whom they 
grapple in mortal strife. At such times men see through 
a glass darkly; to only the rarest and loftiest spirits is 
vouchsafed that clear vision which gradually comes to 
all, even the lesser, as the struggle fades into distance, 
and wounds are forgotten, and peace creeps back to the 
hearts that were hurt. 

But to Lincoln was given this supreme vision. He did 
not hate the man from whom he differed. Weakness was 
as foreign as wickedness to his strong, gentle nature; but 
his courage was of a quality so high that it needed no 
bolstering of dark passion. He saw clearly that the same 
high qualities, the same courage, and willingness for self- 
sacrifice, and devotion to the right as it was given them to 
see the right, belonged both to the men of the North and 
to the men of the South. As the years roll by, and as 
all of us, wherever we dwell, grow to feel an equal pride 
in the valor and self-devotion, alike of the men who wore 
the blue and the men who wore the gray, so this whole 
nation will grow to feel a peculiar sense of pride in the 
man whose blood was shed for the union of his people 
and for the freedom of a race; the lover of his country 
and of all mankind; the mightiest of the mighty men 
who mastered the mighty days, Abraham Lincoln. 



AMERICAN TRADITION 1 
Franklin K. Lane 

It has not been an easy task for me to decide upon 
a theme for discussion to-day. I know that I can tell 
you little of Washington that would be new, and the 
thought has come to me that perhaps you would be 
interested in what might be called a western view of 
American tradition, for I come from the other side of 
this continent where all of our traditions are as yet 
articles of transcontinental traffic, and you are here in 
the very heart of tradition, the sacred seat of our noblest 
memories. 

No doubt you sometimes think that we are reckless of 
the wisdom of our forebears; while we at times have been 
heard to say that you live too securely in that passion 
for the past which makes men mellow but unmodern. 

When you see the West adopting or urging such 
measures as presidential primaries, the election of United 
States Senators by popular vote, the initiative, the refer- 
endum and the recall as means supplementary to repre- 
sentative government, you shudder in your dignified way 
no doubt, at the audacity and irreverence of your crude 
countrymen. They must be in your eyes as far from 
grace as that American who visited one of the ancient 

1 Address delivered by Secretary Lane at the University of 
Virginia, Feb. 22, 191 2. Reprinted from the University of Vir- 
ginia Alumni Bulletin, and from The American Spirit, by Franklin 
K. Lane (Copyright, 1918, by the Frederick A. Stokes Co.). By 
permission of the author and of the publishers. 

8 



AMERICAN TRADITION 9 

temples of India. After a long journey through winding 
corridors of marble, he was brought to a single flickering 
light set in a jeweled recess in the wall. "And what is 
this?" said the tourist. "That, sir," replied the guide, 
"is the sacred fire which was lighted 2,000 years ago and 
never has been out." "Never been out? What nonsense! 
Poof! Well, the blamed thing's out now." This wild 
Westerner doubtless typifies those who without heed and 
in their hot-headed and fanatical worship of change 
would destroy the very light of our civilization. But let 
me remind you that all fanaticism is not radical. There 
is a fanaticism that is conservative, a reverence for things 
as they are that is no less destructive. Some years ago 
I visited a fishing village in Canada peopled by Scotch- 
men who had immigrated in the early part of the nine- 
teenth century. It was a place named Ingonish in Cape 
Breton, a rugged spot that looks directly upon the 
Atlantic at its crudest point. One day I fell into talk 
with a fisherman — a very model of a tawny-haired 
viking. He told me that from his fishing and his farming 
he made some $300 a year. "Why not come over into 
my country," I said, "where you may make that in a 
month?" There came over his face a look of humiliation 
as he replied, "No, I could not." "Why not?" I asked. 
"Because," said he, brushing his hand across his sea- 
burnt beard, "because I can neither read nor write." 
"And why," said I, "haven't you learned? There are 
schools here." "Yes, there are schools, but my father 
could not read or write, and I would have felt that I 
was putting a shame upon the old man if I had learned 
to do something he could not do." Splendid, wasn't it! 
He would not do what his father could not do. Fine! 
Fine as the spirit of any man with a sentiment which 
holds him back from leading a full, rich life. Yet can 
you conceive a nation of such men — idolizing what has 



io FRANKLIN K. LANE 

been, blind to the great vision of the future, fettered 
by the chains of the past, gripped and held fast in the 
hand of the dead, a nation of traditionalists, unable to 
meet the needs of a new day, serene, no doubt self-suffi- 
cient, but coming how far short of realizing that ideal of 
those who praise their God for that they serve his world! 
I have given the two extremes; now let us return to 
our point of departure, and the first question to be 
asked is, "What are the traditions of our people?" This 
nation is not as it was one hundred and thirty-odd 
years ago when we asserted the traditional right of 
Anglo-Saxons to rebel against injustice. We have 
traveled centuries and centuries since then — measured 
in events, in achievements, in depth of insight into the 
secrets of nature, in breadth of view, in sweep of sym- 
pathy, and in the rise of ennobling hope. Physically 
we are to-day nearer to China than we were then to 
Ohio. Socially, industrially, commercially the wide 
world is almost a unit. And these thirteen states have 
spread across a continent to which have been gathered 
the peoples of the earth. We are the "heirs of all 
the ages." Our inheritance of tradition is greater than 
that of any other people, for we trace back not alone to 
King John signing the Magna Charta in that little stone 
hut by the riverside, but to Brutus standing beside the 
slain Caesar, to Charles Martel with his battle-axe raised 
against the advancing horde of an old-world civilization, 
to Martin Luther declaring his square-jawed policy of 
religious liberty, to Columbus in the prow of his boat 
crying to his disheartened crew, "Sail on, sail on, and 
on!" Irishman, Greek, Slav, and Sicilian — all the na- 
tions of the world have poured their hopes and their 
history into this great melting pot, and the product will 
be — in fact, is — a civilization that is new in the sense 
that it is the blend of many, and yet is as old as the 
Egyptians. 



AMERICAN TRADITION n 

Surely the real tradition of such a people is not any 
one way of doing a certain thing; certainly not any set 
and unalterable plan of procedure in affairs, nor even 
any fixed phrase expressive of a general philosophy 
unless it comes from the universal heart of this strange 
new people. Why are we here? What is our purpose? 
These questions will give you the tradition of the Ameri- 
can people, our supreme tradition — the one into which 
all others fall, and a part of which they are — the right 
of man to oppose injustice. There follow from this the 
right of man to govern himself, the right of property 
and to personal liberty, the right to freedom of speech, 
the right to make of himself all that nature will permit, 
the right to be one of many in creating a national life 
that will realize those hopes which singly could not 
be achieved. 

Is there any other tradition so sacred as this — so 
much a part of ourselves — this hatred of injustice? It 
carries in its bosom all the past that inspires our people. 
Their spirit of unrest under wrong has lighted the way 
for the nations of the world. It is not seen alone in 
Kansas and in California, but in England, where a 
Liberal Ministry has made a beginning at the restoration 
of the land to the people; in Germany, where the citizen 
is fighting his way up to power; in Portugal, where a 
university professor sits in the chair a king so lately 
occupied; in Russia, emerging from the Middle Ages, 
with her groping Douma; in Persia, from which young 
Shuster was so recently driven for trying to give to a 
people a sense of national self-respect; in India, where 
an Emperor moves a national capital to pacify sub- 
merged discontent; and even in far Cathay, the mystery 
land of Marco Polo, immobile, phlegmatic, individual- 
istic China, men have been waging war for the philosophy 
incorporated in the first ten lines of our Declaration of 
Independence. 



12 FRANKLIN K. LANE 

Here is the effect of a tradition that is real, not a 
mere group of words or a well-fashioned bit of govern- 
mental machinery — real because it is ours; it has come 
out of our life; for the only real traditions a people have 
are those beliefs that have become a part of them, 
like the good manners of a gentleman. They are really 
our sympathies — sympathies born of experience. Sub- 
jectively they give standpoint; objectively they furnish 
background — a rich, deep background like that of some 
master of light and shade, some Rembrandt, whose pic- 
ture is one great glowing mystery of darkness save in a 
central spot of radiant light where stands a single figure 
or group which holds the eye and enchants the imagina- 
tion. History may give to us the one bright face to 
look upon, but in the deep mystery of the background 
the real story is told; for therein, to those who can see, 
are the groping multitudes feeling their way blindly 
toward the light of self-expression. 

Now, this is a western view of tradition; it is yours, 
too; it was yours first; it was your gift to us. And is 
it impertinent to ask, when your sensibilities are shocked 
at some departure from the conventional in our western 
law, that you search the tradition of your own history 
to know in what spirit and by what method the gods of 
the elder days met the wrongs they wished to right? 
It may be that we ask too many questions; that we are 
unwilling to accept anything as settled; that we are 
curious, distrustful, and as relentlessly logical as a child. 

For what are we but creatures of the night 

Led forth by day, 
Who needs must falter, and with stammering steps 
Spell out our paths in syllables of pain ? 

There are no grown-ups in this new world of de- 
mocracy. We are trying an experiment such as the 
world has never seen. Here we are, so many million 



AMERICAN TRADITION 13 

people at work making a living as best we can; 
90,000,000 people covering half a continent — rich, re- 
spected, feared. Is that all we are? Is that why we 
are? To be rich, respected, feared? Or have we some 
part to play in working out the problems of this world? 
Why should one man have so much and many so little? 
How may the many secure a larger share in the wealth 
which they create without destroying individual initiative 
or blasting individual capacity and imagination? It 
was inevitable that these questions should be asked when 
this republic was established. Man has been struggling 
to have the right to ask these questions for 4,000 years; 
and now that he has the right to ask any questions surely 
we may not with reason expect him to be silent. It is 
no answer to make that men were not asking these ques- 
tions a hundred years ago. So great has been our phy- 
sical endowment that until the most recent years we 
have been indifferent as to the share which each received 
of the wealth produced. We could then accept cheer- 
fully the coldest and most logical of economic theories. 
But now men are wondering as to the future. There 
may be much of envy and more of malice in current 
thought; but underneath it all there is the feeling that 
if a nation is to have a full life it must devise methods 
by which its citizens shall be insured against monopoly 
of opportunity. This is the meaning of many policies 
the full philosophy of which is not generally grasped 
— the regulation of railroads and other public service 
corporations, the conservation of natural resources, the 
leasing of public lands and waterpowers, the control 
of great combinations of wealth. How these movements 
will eventually express themselves none can foretell, but 
in the process there will be some who will dogmatically 
contend that "Whatever is, is right," and others who will 
march under the red flag of revenge and exspoliation. 



14 FRANKLIN K. LANE 

And in that day we must look for men to meet the false 
cry of both sides — "gentlemen unafraid" who will 
neither be the money-hired butlers of the rich nor 
power-loving panderers to the poor. 

Assume the right of self-government and society be- 
comes the scene of an heroic struggle for the realiza- 
tion of justice. Take from the one strong man the right 
to rule and make others serve, the right to take all 
and hold all, the power to grant or to withhold, and 
you have set all men to asking, "What should I have, 
and what should my children have?" and with this come 
all the perils of innovation and the hazards of revolu- 
tion. 

To meet such a situation the traditionalist who be- 
lieves that the last word in politics or in economics was 
uttered a century ago is as far from the truth as he 
who holds that the temporary emotion of the public is 
the stone-carved word from Sinai. 

A railroad people are not to be controlled by ox-team 
theories, declaims the young enthusiast for change. An 
age that dares to tell of what the stars are made; that 
weighs the very suns in its balances; that mocks the 
birds in their flight through the air, and the fish in their 
dart through the sea; that transforms the falling stream 
into fire, light, and music; that embalms upon a piece 
of plate the tenderest tones of the human voice; that 
treats disease with disease; that supplies a new ear 
with the same facility that it replaces a blown-out tire; 
that reaches into the very grave itself and starts again 
the silent heart — surely such an age may be allowed 
to think for itself somewhat upon questions of politics. 

Yet with our searchings and our probings, who knows 
more of the human heart to-day than the old Psalmist? 
And what is the problem of government but one of 
human nature? What Burbank has as yet made grapes 



AMERICAN TRADITION 15 

to grow on thorns or figs on thistles? The riddle 
of the universe is no nearer solution than it was when the 
Sphinx first looked upon the Nile. The one constant 
and inconstant quantity with which man must deal is 
man. Human nature responds so far as we can see 
to the same magnetic pull and push that moved it in 
the days of Abraham and of Socrates. The foundation 
of government is man — changing, inert, impulsive, 
limited, sympathetic, selfish man. His institutions, 
whether social or political, must come out of his wants 
and out of his capacities. The problem of government, 
therefore, is not always what should be done but what 
can be done. We may not follow the supreme tradition 
of the race to create a newer, sweeter world unless we 
give heed to its complementary tradition that man's ex- 
perience cautions him to make a new trail with care. 
He must curb courage with common-sense. He may lay 
his first bricks upon the twentieth story, but not until 
he has made sure of the solidity of the frame below. 
The real tradition of our people permits the mason to 
place brick upon brick wherever he finds it most con- 
venient, safest and most economical; but he must not 
mistake thin air for structural steel. 

Let me illustrate the thought that I would leave 
with you by the description of one of our western rail- 
roads. Your train sweeps across the desert like some bold 
knight in a joust, and when about to drive recklessly into 
a sheer cliff it turns a graceful curve and follows up the 
wild meanderings of a stream until it reaches a ridge 
along which it finds its flinty way for many miles. At 
length you come face to face with a great gulf, a 
canyon — yawning, resounding and purple in its depths. 
Before you lies a path, zigzagging down the canyon's 
side to the very bottom, and away beyond another 
slighter trail climbs up upon the opposite side. Which 



16 FRANKLIN K. LANE 

is our way? Shall we follow the old trail? The answer 
comes as the train shoots out across a bridge and into a 
tunnel on the opposite side, coming out again upon the 
highlands and looking into the Valley of Heart's Desire 
where the wistful Rasselas might have lived. 

When you or I look upon that stretch of steel we 
wonder at the daring of its builders. Great men they 
were who boldly built that road — great in imagination, 
greater in their deeds — for they were men so great 
that they did not build upon a line that was without 
tradition. The route they followed was made by the 
buffalo and the elk ten thousand years ago. The bear 
and the deer followed it generation after generation, 
and after them came the trapper, and then the pioneer. 
It was already a trail when the railroad engineer came 
with transit and chain seeking a path for the great black 
stallion of steel. 

Up beside the stream and along the ridge the track 
was laid. But there was no thought of following the 
old trail downward into the canyon. Then the spirit 
of the new age broke through tradition, the canyon was 
leaped and the mountain's heart pierced, that man might 
have a swifter and safer way to the Valley of Heart's 
Desire. 



AMERICA'S HERITAGE 
Franklin K. Lane 

You have been in conference for the past three days, 
and I have greatly regretted that I could not be with 
you. You have been gathered together as crusaders 
in a great cause. You are the missionaries in a new 
movement. You represent millions of people in the 
United States who to-night believe that there is no other 
question of such importance before the American people 
as the solidifying and strengthening of true American 
sentiment. 

I understand that your conference has been a success; 
and it has been a success because, unlike some other con- 
ferences, it was made up of experts who knew what they 
were talking about. But you know no one can give 
the final answer upon the question of Americanization. 
You may study methods, but you find yourselves foiled 
because there is no one method — no standardized 
method that can always be used to deal correctly and 
truly with any human problem. Bergson, the French 
philosopher, was here a year or two ago, and he made 
a suggestion to me that seemed very profound when 
he said that the theory of evolution could carry on as 
to species until it came to deal with man, and then you 
had to deal with each individual man upon the theory 
that he was a species by himself. And I think there is 

1 Address at the Americanization Banquet, Washington, D. C, 
May 14, iQio. Reprinted by permission from Proceedings of 
the Americanization Conference, Government Printing Office, iqiq. 

17 



18 FRANKLIN K. LANE 

more than superficial significance to that. It may go 
to the very heart and center of what we call spirituality. 
It may be because of that very fact the individual is a 
soul by himself; and it is for that reason that there must 
be avenues opened into men's hearts that can not be 
standardized. 

Man is a great moated, walled castle, with doors by 
the dozens, doors by the score, leading into him — but 
most of us keep our doors closed. It is difficult for 
people to gain access to us; but there are some doors 
that are open to the generality of mankind; and as 
those who are seeking to know our fellow man and to 
reach him, it is our place to find what those doors are 
and how those doors can be opened. 

One of those doors might be labeled "our love for our 
children." That is a door common to all. Another 
door might be labeled "our love for a piece of land." 
Another door might be labeled "our common hatred of 
injustice." Another door might be labeled "the need 
for human sympathy." Another door might be labeled 
"fear of suffering." And another door might be labeled 
"the hope that we all have in our hearts that this world 
will turn into a better one." 

Through some one of those doors every man can be 
reached; at least, if not every man, certainly the great 
mass of mankind. They are not to be reached through 
interest alone; they are not to be reached through mind; 
they are reached through instincts and impulses and 
through tendencies; and there is some word, some act 
that you or I can do or say that will get inside of that 
strange, strange man and reveal him to himself and 
reveal him to us and make him of use to the world. 

We want to reach, through one of those doors, every 
man in the United States who does not sympathize with 
us in a supreme allegiance to our country. You would 



AMERICA'S HERITAGE 19 

be amused to see some of the letters that come to me, 
asking almost peremptorily what methods should be 
adopted by which men and women can be Americanized, 
as if there were some one particular prescription that 
could be given; as if you could roll up the sleeve of a 
man and give him a hypodermic of some solution that 
would, by some strange alchemy, transform him into a 
good American citizen; as if you could take him water, 
and in it make a mixture — one part the ability to read 
and write and speak the English language; then another 
part, the Declaration of Independence; one part, the 
Constitution of the United States; one part, a love for 
apple pie; one part, a desire and a willingness to wear 
American shoes; and another part, a pride in using 
American plumbing; and take all those together and 
grind them up, and have a solution which you could 
put into a man's veins and by those superficialities, trans- 
form him into a man who loves America. No such thing 
can be done. We know it can not be done, because we 
know those who read and write and speak the language 
and they do not have that feeling. We know that we re- 
gard one who takes his glass of milk and his apple pie for 
lunch as presumably a good American. We know that 
there is virtue in the American bath. We know that 
there are principles enunciated in the Declaration of 
Independence and in the Constitution of the United 
States which are necessary to get into one's system before 
he can thoroughly understand the United States; and 
there are some who have those principles as a standard 
for their lives, who yet have never heard of the Declara- 
tion of Independence or of the Constitution of the 
United States. You can not make Americans that way. 
You have got to make them by calling upon the fine 
things that are within them, and by dealing with them 
in sympathy; by appreciating what they have to offer 



20 FRANKLIN K. LANE 

us, and by revealing to them what we have to offer them. 
And that brings to mind the thought that this work must 
be a human work — must be something done out of 
the human heart and speaking to the human heart, and 
must largely turn upon instrumentalities that are in no 
way formal, and that have no dogma and have no 
creed, and which can not be put into writing, and can not 
be set upon the press — to a thought that I have had 
in my mind for some time as to the advancing of a new 
organization in this country — and, perhaps, you will 
sympathize with it — I have called it, for lack of a 
better name, "The League of American Fellowship," and 
there should be no condition for membership, excepting 
a pledge that each one gives that each year, or for one 
year, the member will undertake to interpret America 
sympathetically to at least one foreign-born person, or 
one person in the United States who does not have an 
understanding of American institutions, American tradi- 
tions, American history, American sports, American life, 
and the spirit that is American. If you, upon your 
return to your homes, could organize in the cities that 
you represent, throughout the breadth of this land, some 
such league as that, and by individual effort, and with- 
out formalism, pledge the body of those with whom you 
come in contact to make Americans by sympathy and by 
understanding, I believe we would make great progress 
in the solution of this problem. 

I do not know what method can be adopted for the 
making of Americans, but I think there can be a standard 
test as to the result. We can tell when a man is Ameri- 
can in his spirit. There has been a test through which 
the men of this country — and the women, too — have 
recently passed — supposed to be the greatest of all 
tests — the test of war. When men go forth and sacri- 
fice their lives, then we say they believe in something as 



AMERICA'S HERITAGE 21 

beyond anything else; and so our men in this country, 
boys of foreign birth, boys of foreign parentage, Greek 
and Dane and Italian and Russian and Polander and 
Frenchman and Portuguese, Irish, Scotch — all these 
boys have gone to France, fought their fight, given up 
their lives, and they have proved, all Americans that they 
are, that there is a power in America by which this 
strange conglomeration of peoples can be melted into 
one, and by which a common attachment can be made 
and a common sympathy developed. I do not know how 
it is done, but it is done. 

I remember once, thirty years or more ago, passing 
through North Dakota on a Northern Pacific train. I 
stepped off the platform, and the thermometer was thirty 
or forty degrees below zero. There was no one to be 
seen, excepting one man, and that man, as he stood before 
me, had five different coats on him to keep him warm; 
and I looked out over that sea of snow, and then I said, 
"Well, this is a pretty rough country, isn't it?" He 
was a Dane, I think, and he looked me hard in the eye 
and he said, "Young fellow, I want you to understand 
that this is God's own country." 

Every one of those boys who returned from France 
came back feeling that this is God's own country. He 
knows little of America as a whole, perhaps; he can not 
recite any provisions in the Constitution of the United 
States; it may be that he has learned his English while 
in the Army; but some part of this country is "God's 
own country" to him. And it is a good thing that we 
should not lose the local attachments that we have — 
those narrownesses, those prejudices that give point to 
character. There is a kind of breadth that is shallow- 
ness; there is a kind of sympathy that has no punch. 
We must remember that if that world across the water 
is to be made what it can be under democratic forms, 



22 FRANKLIN K. LANE 

it is to be led by Democracy; and, therefore, the supreme 
responsibility falls upon us to make this all that a De- 
mocracy can be. And if there is a bit of local pride at- 
taching to one part of our soil, that gives emphasis to 
our intense attachment to this country, let it be. I would 
not remove it. I come from a part of this country that 
is supposed to be more prejudiced in favor of itself than 
any other section. I remember years ago hearing that 
the Commissioner of Fisheries wished to propagate and 
spread in these Atlantic waters the western crab — which 
is about four times the size of the Atlantic crab — and 
so they sent two carloads of those crabs to the Atlantic 
coast. They were dumped into the Atlantic at Woods 
Hole, and on each crab was a little aluminum tablet 
saying "When found notify Fish Commission, Wash- 
ington." A year passed and no crab was found; two 
years passed and no crab was found. And the third 
year two of those crabs were found by a Buenos Aires 
fisherman, who reported that they evidently were going 
south, bound around the Cape, returning to California. 
A week or two ago I was addressing a Methodist 
conference in Baltimore, and I told this story to a dear 
old gray-headed man, seated opposite me, who was 
eighty-six years of age, who said he had been preaching 
there for sixty years; and I said to him, "Do you come 
from Maryland?" He said, "Yes, sir." He said, "I 
come from the Eastern Shore. Have you ever been 
there?" I said, "No; I am sorry that I have never been 
on the Eastern Shore." He said, "Never been there? 
Well, I am sorry for you." He said, "You know, we are 
a strange people down there — a strange people." He 
said, "We have some peculiar legends; some stories that 
have come down to us, generation after generation; and 
while other people may not believe them, we do; and 
one of the stories is that when Adam and Eve were in 



AMERICA'S HERITAGE 23 

the Garden of Eden, they fell sick, and the Lord was 
greatly concerned about them, and he called a meeting 
of his principal angels and consulted with them as to 
what to do for them by way of giving them a change of 
air and improving their health; and the Angel Gabriel 
said, Why not take them down to the Eastern Shore V 
And the Lord said, 'Oh, no; that would not be sufficient 
change.' " 

And so, as you go throughout the United States, you 
find men attached to different parts of our continent, 
making their homes in different places, and not thinking 
often about the great country to which they belong, 
excepting as it is represented by that flag; and every 
one of those local attachments is a valuable asset to 
our country, and nothing should be done to minimize 
them. When the boys come back from France, every 
one of them says, "The thing I most desired while I 
was in France was to get home, for there I first realized 
how splendid and beautiful and generous and rich a 
country America was." We want to make these men 
who come to us from abroad realize what those boys 
realized, and we want to put inside of their spirits an 
appreciation of those things that are noble and fine in 
American law and American institutions and American 
life; and we want them to join with us as citizens in 
giving to America every good thing that comes out of 
every foreign country. 

We are a blend in sympathies and a blend in art, a 
blend in literature, a blend in tendencies, and that is 
our hope for making this the supremely great race of 
the world. It is not to be done mechanically; it is 
not to be done scientifically; it is to be done by the 
human touch; by reaching some door into that strange 
man, with some word or some act that will show to him 
that there is in America the kind of sentiment and 
sympathy that that man's soul is reaching out for. 



24 FRANKLIN K. LANE 

This is God's own country. We want the boys to 
know that the sky is blue and big and broad with hope, 
and that its fields are green with promise, and that in 
every one of our hearts there is the desire that the land 
shall be better than it is — while we have no apologies 
to make for what it is. This is no land in which to 
spread any doctrine of revolution, because we have 
abolished revolution. When we came here we gave over 
the right of revolution. You can not have revolution in 
a land unless you have somebody to revolt against — and 
whom would you revolt against in the United States? 
And when we won our revolution 140 years ago, we then 
said, "We give over that inherent right of revolution 
because there can be no such thing as revolution against 
a country in which the people govern." 

We have no particular social theory to advocate in 
Americanization; no economic system to advocate; but 
we can fairly and squarely demand of every man in the 
United States, if he is a citizen, that he shall give 
supreme allegiance to the flag of the United States, and 
swear by it — and he is not worthy to be its citizen 
unless it holds first place in his heart. 

The best test of whether we are Americans or not will 
not come, nor has it come, with war. It will come when 
we go hand in hand together, recognizing that there are 
defects in our land, that there are things lacking in our 
system; that our programs are not perfect; that our 
institutions can be bettered; and we look forward con- 
stantly by cooperation to making this a land in which 
there will be a minimum of fear and a maximum of hope. 



ADDRESS AT THE COLLEGE OF THE 
HOLY CROSS 1 

Calvin Coolidge 

To come from the press of public affairs, where the 
practical side of life is at its flood, into these calm and 
classic surroundings, where ideals are cherished for 
their own sake, is an intense relief and satisfaction. 
Even in the full flow of Commencement exercises it is 
apparent that here abide the truth and the servants of 
the truth. Here appears the fulfillment of the past in 
the grand company of alumni, recalling a history already 
so thick with laurels. Here is the hope of the future, 
brighter yet in the young men to-day sent forth. 

The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads 

Celestial armory, shield, helm and spear, 

Hung bright, with diamond flaming and with gold. 2 

In them the dead past lives. They represent the col- 
lege. They are the college. It is not in the campus 
with its imposing halls and temples, nor in the silent 
lore of the vast library or the scientific instruments of 
well-equipped laboratories, but in the men who are the 
incarnation of all these, that your college lives. It is 
not enough that there be knowledge, history and poetry, 

1 From Have Faith in Massachusetts, by Calvin Coolidge. The 
selection is used by permission of, and by special arrangement 
with, the Houghton Mifflin Co., the authorized publishers. Copy- 
right, 1919, by Houghton Mifflin Co. The address was delivered 
June 25, iqiq. 

2 Paradise Lost, IV, 1. 552. 

25 



26 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

eloquence and art, science and mathematics, philosophy 
and ethics, ideas and ideals. They must be vitalized. 
They must be fashioned into life. To send forth men 
who live all these is to be a college. This temple of 
learning must be translated into human form if it is to 
exercise any influence over the affairs of mankind, or if 
its alumni are to wield the power of education. 

A great thinker and master of the expression of 
thought has told us: — 

It was before Deity, embodied in a human form, walking among 
men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, 
weeping over their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding 
on the cross, that the prejudices of the Synagogue, and the doubts 
of the Academy, and the pride of the Portico, and the fasces of 
the Lictor, and the swords of thirty Legions, were humbled in 
the dust. 1 

If college-bred men are to exercise the influence over 
the progress of the world which ought to be their por- 
tion, they must exhibit in their lives a knowledge and a 
learning which is marked with candor, humility, and the 
honest mind. 

The present is ever influenced mightily by the past. 
Patrick Henry spoke with great wisdom when he de- 
clared to the Continental Congress, "I have but one 
lamp by which my feet are guided and that is the lamp 
of experience." Mankind is finite. It has the limits of 
all things finite. The processes of government are sub- 
ject to the same limitations, and, lacking imperfections, 
would be something more than human. It is always 
easy to discover flaws, and, pointing them out, to criti- 
cize. It is not so easy to suggest substantial remedies 
or propose constructive policies. It is characteristic of 
the unlearned that they are forever proposing something 
which is old, and, because it has recently come to their 

iMacaulay's Essay on Milton. 



ADDRESS AT HOLY CROSS 27 

own attention, supposing it to be new. Into this error 
men of liberal education ought not to fall. The forms 
and processes of government are not new. They have 
been known, discussed, and tried in all their varieties 
through the past ages. That which America exemplifies 
in her Constitution and system of representative gov- 
ernment is the most modern, and of any yet devised 
gives promise of being the most substantial and enduring. 
It is not unusual to hear arguments against our insti- 
tutions and our government, addressed particularly to 
recent arrivals and the sons of recent arrivals to our 
shores. They sometimes take the form of a claim that 
our institutions were founded long ago; that changed 
conditions require that they now be changed. Espe- 
cially is it claimed by those seeking such changes that 
these new arrivals and men of their race and ideas had 
no hand in the making of our country, and that it was 
formed by those who were hostile to them and there- 
fore they owe it no support. Whatever may be the 
condition in relation to others, and whatever ignorance 
and bigotry may imagine such arguments do not apply 
to those of the race and blood so prominent in this 
assemblage. To establish this it were but necessary to 
cite eleven of the fifty-five signers of the Declaration 
of Independence, and recall that on the roll of Washing- 
ton's generals were Sullivan, Knox, Wayne, and the 
gallant son of Trinity College, Dublin, who fell at 
Quebec at the head of his troops — Richard Mont- 
gomery. But scholarship has answered ignorance. The 
learned and patriotic research of men of the education 
of Dr. James J. Walsh and Michael J. O'Brien, the 
historian of the Irish American Society, has demon- 
strated that a generous portion of the rank and file of 
the men who fought in the Revolution and supported 
those who framed our institutions was not alien to those 



28 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

who are represented here. It is no wonder that from 
among such that which is American has drawn some of 
its most steadfast defenders. 

In these days of violent agitation scholarly men should 
reflect that the progress of the past has been accom- 
plished not by the total overthrow of institutions so much 
as by discarding that which was bad and preserving that 
which was good; not by revolution but by evolution has 
man worked out his destiny. We shall miss the central 
feature of all progress unless we hold to that process now. 
It is not a question of whether our institutions are per- 
fect. The most beneficent of our institutions had their 
beginnings in forms which would be particularly odious 
to us now. Civilization began with war and slavery; 
government began in absolute despotism; and religion 
itself grew out of superstition which was oftentimes 
marked with human sacrifices. So out of our present 
imperfections we shall develop that which is more per- 
fect. But the candid mind of the scholar will admit and 
seek to remedy all wrongs with the same zeal with which 
it defends all rights. 

From the knowledge and the learning of the scholar 
there ought to be developed an abiding faith. What is 
the teaching of all history? That which is necessary for 
the welfare and progress of the human race has never 
been destroyed. The discoverers of truth, the teachers 
of science, the makers of inventions, have passed to 
their last rewards, but their works have survived. The 
Phoenician galleys and the civilization which was born 
of their commerce have perished, but the alphabet which 
that people perfected remains. The shepherd kings of 
Israel, the temple and empire of Solomon, have gone 
the way of all the earth, but the Old Testament has 
been preserved for the inspiration of mankind. The 
ark of the covenant and the seven-pronged candlestick 



ADDRESS AT HOLY CROSS 29 

have passed from human view; the inhabitants of Judea 
have been dispersed to the ends of the earth, but the 
New Testament has survived and increased in its influ- 
ence among men. The glory of Athens and Sparta, 
the grandeur of the Imperial City, are a long-lost 
memory, but the poetry of Homer and Virgil, the oratory 
of Demosthenes and Cicero, the philosophy of Plato and 
Aristotle, abide with us forevermore. Whatever America 
holds that may be of value to posterity will not pass 
away. 

The long and toilsome processes which have marked 
the progress of the past cannot be shunned by the 
present generation to our advantage. We have no right 
to expect as our portion something substantially different 
from human experience in the past. The constitution 
of the universe does not change. Human nature re- 
mains constant. That service and sacrifice which have 
been the price of past progress are the price of progress 
now. 

This is not a gospel of despair, but of hope and high 
expectation. Out of many tribulations mankind has 
pressed steadily onward. The opportunity for a rational 
existence was never before so great. Blessings were 
never so bountiful. But the evidence was never so 
overwhelming as now that men and nations must live 
rationally or perish. 

The defences of our Commonwealth are not material 
but mental and spiritual. Her fortifications, her castles, 
are her institutions of learning. Those who are admitted 
to the college campus tread the ramparts of the State. 
The classic halls are the armories from which are 
furnished forth the knights in armor to defend and 
support our liberty. For such high purpose has Holy 
Cross been called into being. A firm foundation of 
the Commonwealth. A defender of righteousness. A 



3 o CALVIN COOLIDGE 

teacher of holy men. Let her turrets continue to rise, 
showing forth "the way, the truth and the light" — 

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 
And with their mild persistence urge man's arch 
To vaster issues. 1 

1 George Eliot's "0 may I join the choir invisible." 



OUR FUTURE IMMIGRATION POLICY 1 
Frederic C. Howe 

The outstanding feature of our immigration policy 
has been its negative character. The immigrant is ex- 
pected to look out for himself. Up to the present time 
legislation has been guided by conditions which pre- 
vailed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We 
have permitted the immigrant to come; only recently 
has he been examined for physical, mental, and moral 
defects at the port of debarkation, and then he has 
been permitted to land and go where he willed. This 
was the practice in colonial days. It has been con- 
tinued without essential change down to the present 
time. It was a policy which worked reasonably well in 
earlier times, when the immigrant passed from the ship 
to land to be had from the Indians, or in later genera- 
tions from the government. 

And from generation to generation the immigrant 
moved westward, just beyond the line of settlement, 
where he found a homestead awaiting his labor. These 
were the years of Anglo-Saxon, of German, of Scandi- 
navian, of north European settlement, when the immi- 
gration to this country was almost exclusively from the 
same stock. And so long as land was to be had for the 
asking there was no immigration problem. The in- 
dividual States were eager for settlers to develop their 

1 From Scribner's Magazine, May, 1917. Copyright, 1017, by 
Charles Scribner's Sons. By permission of the author and of the 
publishers. 

3i 



32 FREDERIC C. HOWE 

resources. There were few large cities. Industry was 
just beginning. There was relatively little poverty, while 
the tenements and slums of our cities and mining dis- 
tricts had not yet appeared. This was the period of the 
"old immigration," as it is called; the immigration from 
the north of Europe, from the same stock that had made 
the original settlements in New England, New York, 
Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the South; it was the same 
stock that settled Ohio and the Middle West, Kansas, 
Nebraska, and the Dakotas. 

The "old immigration" from northern Europe ceased 
to be predominant in the closing years of the last cen- 
tury. Then the tide shifted to southern Europe, to 
Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Poland, and the Balkans. 
A new strain was being added to our Anglo-Saxon, Ger- 
manic stock. The "new immigration" did not speak our 
language. It was unfamiliar with self-government. It 
was largely illiterate. And with this shift from the "old 
immigration" to the "new," immigration increased in 
volume. In 1892 the total immigration was 579,663; 
in 1894 it fell to 285,631. As late as 1900 it was but 
448,572. Then it began to rise. In 1903 it was 
857,046; in 1905 it reached the million mark; and from 
that time down to the outbreak of the war the total 
immigration averaged close on to a million a year, the 
total arrivals in 1914 being 1,218,480. Almost all of 
the increase came from southern Europe, over 70 per 
cent of the total being from the Latin and Slavic coun- 
tries. In 1914 Austria contributed 134,831 people; 
Hungary 143,321; Italy 283,734; Russia 255,660; while 
the United Kingdom contributed 73,417; Germany 35,- 
734; Norway 8,329; and Sweden 14,800. 

For twenty years the predominant immigration has 
been from south and central Europe. And it is this 
"new immigration," so called, that has created the "im- 



OUR FUTURE IMMIGRATION POLICY 33 

migration problem." It is largely responsible for the 
agitation for restrictive legislation on the part of persons 
fearful of the admixture of races, of the difficulties of 
assimilation, of the high illiteracy of the southern group ; 
and most of all for the opposition on the part of or- 
ganized labor to the competition of the unskilled army 
of men who settle in the cities, who go to the mines, 
and who struggle for the existing jobs in competition with 
those already here. For the newcomer has to find work 
quickly. He has exhausted what little resources he 
had in transportation. In the great majority of cases his 
transportation has been advanced by friends and rela- 
tives already here, who have lured him to this country 
by descriptions of better economic conditions, greater 
opportunities for himself, and especially the new life 
which opens up to his children. And this overseas com- 
petition is a serious problem to American labor, especially 
in the iron and steel industries, in the mining districts, 
in railroad and other construction work, into which em- 
ployments the foreigners largely go. 

How seriously the workers and our cities are burdened 
with this new immigration from south and central Europe 
is indicated by the fact that 56 per cent of the foreign- 
born population in this country is in the States to the 
east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio Rivers, to 
which at least 80 per cent of the present incoming immi- 
grants are destined. In the larger cities between 70 
and 80 per cent of the population is either foreign born 
or immediately descended from persons of foreign birth. 
In New York City 78.6 per cent of the people are of 
foreign birth or immediate foreign extraction. In Boston 
the percentage is 74.2, in Cleveland 75.8, and in Chicago 
77.5. In the mining districts the percentage is even 
higher. In other words, almost all of the immigration 
of the last twenty years has gone to the cities, to industry, 



34 FREDERIC C. HOWE 

to mining. Here the immigrant competes with organized 
labor. He burdens our inadequate housing accommoda- 
tions. He congests the tenements. He is at least a prob- 
lem for democracy. 

But the effect of immigration on our life is not as 
simple as the advocates of restriction insist. It is 
probable that the struggle of the working classes to 
improve their conditions is rendered more difficult by 
the incoming tide of unskilled labor. It is probable 
too that wages are kept down in certain occupations and 
that employers are desirous of keeping open the gate 
as a means of securing cheap labor and labor that is 
difficult to organize. It is also probably true that the 
immigrant is a temporary burden to democracy and 
especially to our cities. But the subject is not nearly 
as simple as this. The immigrant is a consumer as 
well as a producer. He creates a market for the prod- 
ucts of labor even while he competes with labor. And 
he creates new trades and new industries, like the 
clothing trades of New York, Chicago, and Cleveland, 
which employ hundreds of thousands of workers. And 
a large part of the immigrants assimilate rapidly. 

In addition, the new stock from southern and central 
Europe brings to this country qualities of mind and of 
temperament that may in time greatly enrich the more 
severe and practical-minded races of northern Europe. 

But it is not the purpose of this article to discuss the 
question of immigration restriction or the kinds of tests 
that should be applied to the incoming alien. It is 
rather to consider the internal or domestic policy we 
have thus far adopted after the immigrant has landed 
on our shores. And this policy has been wholly nega- 
tive. Our attitude toward the immigrant has undergone 
little change from the very beginning, when immigration 
was easily absorbed by the free lands of the West. Even 



OUR FUTURE IMMIGRATION POLICY 35 

at the present time our legislative policy is an outgrowth 
of the assumption that the immigrant could go to the 
land and secure a homestead of his own; and of the 
additional assumption that he needed no assistance or 
direction when he reached this country any more than 
did the immigrants of earlier centuries. 

Up to the present time, with the exception of the 
Oriental races, there has been no real restriction to 
immigration. Our policy has been selective rather than 
restrictive. Of those arriving certain individuals are 
rejected by the immigration authorities because of some 
defect of mind, of body, or of morals, or because of age 
infirmity, or some other cause by reason of which the 
aliens are likely to become public charges. For the 
official year 1914, of the 1,218,480 applying for admis- 
sion 15,745 were excluded because they were likely to 
become a public charge; 6,537 were afflicted with physical 
or mental infirmities affecting their ability to earn a 
living; 3,257 were afflicted with tuberculosis or with 
contagious diseases; and 1,274 with serious mental de- 
fects. All told, in that year less than 2 per cent of the 
total number applying for admission were rejected and 
sent back to the countries from which they came. 

Our immigration policy ends with the selection. From 
the stations the immigrants pass into the great cities, 
chiefly into New York, or are placed upon the trains 
leaving the ports of debarkation for the interior. They 
are not directed to any destination, and, most important 
of all, no effort is made to place them on the land under 
conditions favorable to successful agriculture. And this 
is the problem of the future. It is a problem far bigger 
than the distribution of immigration. It is a problem 
of our entire industrial life. For, while our immigrants 
are congested in the cities agriculture suffers from a 
lack of labor. Farms are being abandoned. Not more 



36 FREDERIC C. HOWE 

than one-third of the land in the United States is under 
cultivation. Far more important still, millions of acres 
are held out of use. Land monopoly prevails all over 
the Western States. According to the most available 
statistics of land ownership, approximately 200,000,000 
acres are owned by less than 50,000 corporations and 
individual men. Many of these estates exceed 10,000 
or even 50,000 acres in extent. Some exceed the million 
mark. States like California, Texas, Oregon, Washing- 
ton, and other Western States have great manorial pre- 
serves like those of England, Prussia, and Russia which 
are held out of use or inadequately used, and which 
have increased in value a hundredfold during the last 
fifty years. These great estates are largely the result 
of the land grants given to the railroads as well as the 
careless policy of the government in the disposal of the 
public domain. 

Here is one of the anomalies of the nation. Here is 
the real explanation of the immigration problem. Here, 
too, is the division between the "old immigration" and 
the "new immigration. " For the "old immigration" 
from the north of Europe went to the country. The 
"new immigration" has gone to the cities because the 
land had all been given away and the only opportunity 
for immediate employment was to be found in the 
cities and mining districts. The "new immigration" from 
the South of Europe is as eager for home-ownership as 
the "old immigration" from the north of Europe. But 
the land is all gone, and the incoming alien is compelled 
to accept the first job that is offered, or starve. It is 
this too that has stimulated the protest on the part of 
labor against the incoming tide. For, so long as land 
was accessible for all, the incoming immigrants went 
to the country, where they could build their fortunes as 
they willed, just as they did in earlier generations. 



OUR FUTURE IMMIGRATION POLICY 37 

The European War has forced many new problems 
upon us. And one of these is the relation of people to 
the land. Of one thing, at least, we may be certain — 
that with the ending of the war there will be a competi- 
tion for men, a competition not only by the exhausted 
Powers of Europe but by Canada, Australia, and America 
as well. Europe will endeavor to keep its able-bodied 
men at home. They will be needed for reconstruction 
purposes. There will be little immigration out of France; 
for France is a nation of home-owning peasants and 
France has never contributed in material numbers to 
our population. The same is true of Germany. Germany 
is the most highly socialized state in Europe. The state 
owns the railways, many mines, and great stretches of 
land. In England too the state has been socialized to a 
remarkable extent as a result of the war. Russia and 
Austria-Hungary have undergone something of the 
same transformation. When the war is over these coun- 
tries will probably endeavor to mobilize their men and 
women for industry as they previously mobilized them 
for war. And in so far as they are able to adjust credit 
and assistance to their people, they will strive to keep 
them at home. 

But that is not all. Millions of men have been killed 
or incapacitated. Poland, Galicia, parts of Hungary and 
Russia have been devastated. Many nobles who owned 
the great estates have been killed. Many of them are 
bankrupt. Their land holdings may be broken up into 
small farms. The state can only go on, taxes can only 
be collected if industry and agriculture are brought 
back to life. And the nations of Europe are turning 
their attention to a consciously worked out agricultural 
programme for putting the returning soldiers back on 
the land. Not only that, but reports from steamship 
and railroad companies indicate that large numbers of 



38 FREDERIC C. HOWE 

men are planning to return to Europe after the war. 
The estimates, based upon investigation, run as high 
as a million men. Poles and Hungarians are imbued 
with the idea that land will be cheap in Europe and that 
the savings they have accumulated in this country can 
be used for the purchase of small holdings in their 
native country, through the possession of which their 
social and economic status will be materially improved. 

I have no doubt but that the years which follow the end- 
ing of the war will see an exodus from this country which 
may be as great as the incoming tide in the years of our 
highest immigration. Along with this exodus to Europe, 
Canada will endeavor to repeople her land. Western 
Canada especially is working out an agricultural and land 
programme. Even before the war her provinces had 
removed taxes from houses and improvements and were 
increasing the taxes upon vacant land, with the aim of 
breaking up land speculation. And this policy will 
probably be largely extended after the war is over. 
England, too, is developing a comprehensive land policy, 
and is placing returning soldiers upon the land under 
conditions similar to those provided in the Irish Land 
Purchase Act. It is not improbable that the war will 
be followed by a breaking up of many of the great 
estates in England and the settlement of many men upon 
the land in farm colonies, such as have been worked out 
in Denmark and Germany. Even prior to the war Ger- 
many had placed hundreds of thousands of persons upon 
the state-owned farms and on private estates which had 
been acquired by the government for this purpose. Over 
$400,000,000 has been appropriated for the purpose of 
encouraging home-ownership in Germany during recent 
years. 

All over the world, in fact, the necessity of a new 
governmental policy in regard to agriculture is being 



OUR FUTURE IMMIGRATION POLICY 39 

recognized. Thousands of Danish agricultural workers 
have been converted into home-owning farmers through 
the aid of the government. To-day 90 per cent of the 
farmers in Denmark own their own farms, while only 
10 per cent are tenants. The government advances 90 
per cent of the cost of a farm, the farmer being required 
to advance only the remaining 10 per cent. In addition, 
teachers and inspectors employed by the state give instruc- 
tion as to farming, marketing, and the use of cooperative 
agencies, while the railroads are owned by the state and 
operated with an eye to the development of agriculture. 
As a result of this, Denmark has become the world's 
agricultural experiment-station. The immigration from 
Denmark has practically ceased, as it has from other 
countries of Europe in which peasant proprietorship 
prevails. 

In my opinion, immigration to the United States will 
be profoundly influenced by these big land-colonization 
projects of the European nations. It may be that large 
numbers of men with their savings will be lured away 
from the United States. As a result, agricultural prod- 
uce in the United States may be materially reduced. 
Even now there is a great shortage of agricultural labor, 
while tenancy has been increasing at a very rapid rate. 
And America may be confronted with the immediate 
necessity of competing with Europe to keep people in 
this country. A measure is now before Congress looking 
to the development of farm colonies, in which the gov- 
ernment will acquire large stretches of land to be sold 
on easy terms of payment to would-be farmers, who are 
permitted to repay the initial cost in installments covering 
a long period of years. Similar measures are under 
discussion in California, in which State a comprehensive 
investigation has been made of the subject of tenancy 
and the possibility of farm settlement. Looking in the 



4 o FREDERIC C. HOWE 

same direction are the declarations of many farmers' 
organizations throughout the West for the taxing of land 
as a means of ending land monopoly and land specula- 
tion. This is one of the cardinal planks in the platform 
of the non-partisan organization of farmers of North 
Dakota which swept the State in the last election. 
Every branch of the government was captured by the 
farmers, whose platform declared for the untaxing of 
all kinds of farm-improvements and an increase in the 
tax rate on unimproved land as a means of developing 
the State and ending the idle-land speculation which 
prevails. 

If such a policy as this were adopted for the nation 
as a whole; if the idle land now held out of use were 
opened up to settlement; if the government were to 
provide ready-made farms to be paid for upon easy 
terms, and if, along with this, facilities for marketing, 
for terminals, for slaughter-houses, and for agencies for 
bringing the produce of the farms to the markets were 
provided, not only would agriculture be given a fillip 
which it badly needs but the congestion of our cities 
and the immigration problem would be open to easy 
solution. Then for many generations to come land 
would be available in abundance. For America could 
support many times its present population if the re- 
sources of the country were opened up to use. Germany 
with 67,000,000 people could be placed inside of Texas. 
And Texas is but one of forty-eight States. Under 
such a policy the government could direct immigration 
to places of profitable settlement; it could relieve the 
congestion of the cities and Americanize the immigrant 
under conditions similar to those which prevailed from 
the first landing in New England down to the enclosure 
of the continent in the closing days of the last century. 



OUR FUTURE IMMIGRATION POLICY 41 

For the immigration problem is and always has been an 
economic problem. And back of all other conditions of 
national well-being is the proper relation of the people 
to the land. 



A NEW RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN 
CAPITAL AND LABOR 1 

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. 

The experience through which our country has passed 
in the months of war, exhibiting as it has the willingness 
of all Americans without distinction of race, creed, or 
class to sacrifice personal ends for a great ideal and to 
work together in a spirit of brotherhood and cooperation, 
has been a revelation to our own people, and a cause for 
congratulations to us all. Now that the stimulus of the 
war is over the question which confronts our nation is 
how can these high levels of unselfish devotion to the 
common good be maintained and extended to the civic 
life of the nation in times of peace. 

We have been called together to consider the indus- 
trial problem. Only as each of us discharges his duties 
as a member of this conference in the same high spirit 
of patriotism, of unselfish allegiance to right and justice, 
of devotion to the principles of democracy and brother- 
hood with which we approached the problems of the 
war, can we hope for success in the solution of the 
industrial problem which is no less vital to the life of 
the nation. There are pessimists who say that there is 
no solution short of revolution and the overturn of the 
existing social order. Surely the men and women who 
have shown themselves capable of such lofty sacrifice, 
who have actually given themselves so freely, gladly, 

1 Address at the National Industrial Conference, Washington, 
D. C, Oct. 1 6, ioio. By permission. 

42 



CAPITAL AND LABOR 43 

unreservedly, as the people of this great country have 
during these past years, will stand together as unselfishly 
in solving this great industrial problem as they did in 
dealing with the problems of the war if only right is 
made clear and the way to a solution pointed out. 

The world position which our country holds to-day is 
due to the wide vision of the statesmen who founded 
these United States and to the daring and indomitable 
persistence of the great industrial leaders, together with 
the myriads of men who with faith in their leadership 
have cooperated to rear the marvelous industrial struc- 
ture of which our country is justly so proud. This result 
has been produced by the cooperation of the four factors 
in industry, labor, capital, management and the public, 
the last represented by the consumer and by organized 
government. No one of these groups can alone claim 
credit for what has been accomplished. Just what is 
the relative importance of the contribution made to the 
success of industry by these several factors and what 
their relative rewards should be are debatable questions. 
But however views may differ on these questions it is 
clear that the common interest cannot be advanced by 
the effort of any one party to dominate the other, to 
dictate arbitrarily the terms on which alone it will co- 
operate, to threaten to withdraw if any attempt is 
made to thwart the enforcement of its will. Such a 
position is as un-American as it is intolerable. 

Almost countless are the suggested solutions of the 
industrial problem which have been brought forth since 
industry first began to be a problem. Most of these 
are impracticable; some are unjust; some are selfish and 
therefore unworthy; some of them have merit and should 
be carefully studied. None can be looked to as a 
panacea. There are those who believe that legislation 
is the cure-all for every social, economic, political, and 



44 JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, JR. 

industrial ill. Much can be done by legislation to pre- 
vent injustice and encourage right tendencies, but legis- 
lation will never solve the industrial problem. Its solu- 
tion can be brought about only by the introduction of a 
new spirit into the relationship between the parties to 
industry — a spirit of justice and brotherhood. 

The personal relationship which existed in bygone 
days is essential to the development of this new spirit. 
It must be reestablished; if not in its original form at 
least as nearly so as possible. In the early days of the 
development of industry, the employer and capital in- 
vestor were frequently one. Daily contact was had 
between him and his employees, who were his friends and 
neighbors. Any questions which arose on either side 
were taken up at once and readily adjusted. A feeling of 
genuine friendliness, mutual confidence, and stimulating 
interest in the common enterprise was the result. How 
different is the situation to-day! Because of the pro- 
portions which modern industry has attained, employers 
and employees are too often strangers to each other. 
Personal contact, so vital to the success of any enterprise, 
is practically unknown, and naturally, misunderstanding, 
suspicion, distrust, and too often hatred have developed, 
bringing in their train all the industrial ills which have 
become far too common. Where men are strangers and 
have no points of contact, this is the usual outcome. 
On the other hand, where men meet frequently about a 
table, rub elbows, exchange views and discuss matters 
of common interest, almost invariably it happens that 
the vast majority of their differences quickly disappear 
and friendly relations are established. Much of the 
strife and bitterness in industrial relations results from 
lack of ability or willingness on the part of both labor 
and capital to view their common problems each from 
the other's point of view. 



CAPITAL AND LABOR 45 

A man who recently devoted some months to studying 
the industrial problem and who came in contact with 
thousands of workmen in various industries throughout 
the country has said that it was obvious to him from the 
outset that the working men were seeking for some- 
thing, which at first he thought to be higher wages. As 
his touch with them extended, he came to the con- 
clusion, however, that not higher wages but recognition 
as men was what they really sought. What joy can 
there be in life, what interest can a man take in his 
work, what enthusiasm can he be expected to develop on 
behalf of his employer, when he is regarded as a num- 
ber on a payroll, a cog in a wheel, a mere "hand"? Who 
would not earnestly seek to gain recognition of his man- 
hood and the right to be heard and treated as a human 
being, not as a machine? 

While obviously under present conditions those who 
invest their capital in an industry, often numbered by 
the thousand, cannot have personal acquaintance with 
the thousands and tens of thousands of those who invest 
their labor, contact between these two parties in interest 
can and must be established, if not directly then through 
their respective representatives. The resumption of such 
personal relation through frequent conference and cur- 
rent meetings, held for the consideration of matters of 
common interest such as terms of employment, and 
working and living conditions, is essential in order to 
restore a spirit of mutual confidence, good will, and co- 
operation. Personal relations can be revived under 
modern conditions only through the adequate representa- 
tion of the employees. Representation is a principle 
which is fundamentally just and vital to the successful 
conduct of industry. This is the principle upon which 
the democratic government of our country is founded. 
On the battlefields of France this nation poured out its 



46 JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, JR. 

blood freely in order that democracy might be maintained 
at home and that its beneficent institutions might be- 
come available in other lands as well. Surely it is 
not consistent for us as Americans to demand democracy 
in government and practice autocracy in industry. 

What can this conference do to further the establish- 
ment of democracy in industry and lay a sure and solid 
foundation for the permanent development of coopera- 
tion, good-will, and industrial well being? To undertake 
to agree on the details of plans and methods is apt to 
lead to endless controversy without constructive result. 
Can we not, however, unite in the adoption of the prin- 
ciple of representation, and the agreement to make every 
effort to secure the endorsement and acceptance of this 
principle by all chambers of commerce, industrial and 
commercial bodies, and all organizations of labor? Such 
action I feel confident would be overwhelmingly backed 
by public opinion and cordially approved by the fed- 
eral government. The assurance thus given of a closer 
relationship between the parties to industry would further 
justice, promote good-will, and help to bridge the gulf 
between capital and labor. 

It is not for this or any other body to undertake to 
determine for industry at large what form representation 
shall take. Once having adopted the principle of repre- 
sentation, it is obviously wise that the method to be 
employed should be left in each specific instance to be 
determined by the parties in interest. If there is to be 
peace and good will between the several parties in in- 
dustry, it will surely not be brought about by the en- 
forcement upon unwilling groups of a method which in 
their judgment is not adapted to their peculiar needs. 
In this as in all else, persuasion is an essential element 
in bringing about conviction. With the developments 
in industry what they are to-day there is sure to come a 



CAPITAL AND LABOR 47 

progressive evolution from autocratic single control, 
whether by capital, labor, or the state, to democratic 
cooperative control by all three. The whole movement 
is evolutionary. That which is fundamental is the idea 
of representation, and that idea must find expression in 
those forms which will serve it best, with conditions, 
forces, and times, what they are. 



MY UNCLE 1 

Alvin Johnson 

My uncle only by marriage, he is naturally the less 
intelligible and the more intriguing to me. I can't say 
with assurance whether I feel absolutely at home with 
him or not, but I think I do. Always he has treated 
me with the utmost kindness. That he regards me 
exactly as a nephew of the blood, he makes frequent 
occasion to assure me, especially on his birthday, which 
we all make much of, since it is about the only day when 
we are chartered to sentimentalize quite shamelessly over 
him. But behind his solemn face and straight, quizzical 
gaze, I often detect a lurking reservation in his judgment 
of me. He thinks, I believe, that I have not been 
altogether weaned of the potentates and powers I ab- 
jured when I crossed the water to become a member of 
his family. Not that he greatly cares. Potentates and 
powers, emperors, kings, princes, are treasured words in 
his oratorical vocabulary — he could not very well do 
without them. He is a democrat, and he declares that 
in the presence of hereditary majesties, he would most 
resolutely refuse to bend the knee. No doubt he would, 
and his instinct is correct aesthetically as well as morally. 
It's a stiff knee he wears, and you can't help smiling at 
the thought of the two long members of his leg, tightly 
cased in striped trousers, arranging themselves in an 

1 Reprinted from John Stuyvesant, Ancestor, by Alvin Johnson. 
Copyright, iqiq, by Harcourt, Brace and Howe, Inc. By per- 
mission of the author and of the publishers. 

48 



MY UNCLE 49 

obsequious right angle. Erect and stiff, chest out, chin 
whiskers to front, eyes blinking independently, my uncle 
is superb. Or when he raises his hat with a large, out- 
ward gesture of his arm, bowing slightly from the 
shoulders, in affable salutation. Or most of all, when 
his fists clench, his jaws display big nervous knots, his 
eyes gleam with hard blue light in wrath over some pal- 
pable iniquity, some base cowardice, some outrageous 
act of cruelty or oppression. 

The mood of rage is, to be sure, infrequent with him, 
and he prides himself in a self-control that forbids him to 
act upon it. Therefore, certain cocky foreign fellows, 
upholders of the duty of fighting at the drop of the hat, 
have charged that our uncle would place peace above 
honor. And some of us, his nephews, are not exactly 
easy under the charge. It seems to reflect on us. But 
most of us really know better. Our uncle hates trouble, 
and prefers argument to fists. But nobody had better 
presume too much upon his distaste for violence. 

Pugnacity, declares my uncle, is a form of senti- 
mentalism, and all sentimentalism is despicable. This 
is a practical world. Determine the value of what you are 
after and count the cost. And wherever you can, re- 
duce all items to dollars and cents. "Aha!" cry the 
hostile critics of our house, "what a gross materialist!" 
And some, even of the nephews of the blood, repeat the 
taunt behind our good uncle's back. At first I too 
thought there might be something in it. But I was 
forced to a different view by dint of reflection on the 
notorious fact that my uncle is far readier in a good 
cause to "shell out" his dollars and cents than any of 
his idealistic critics. Reduction of a problem to dollars 
and cents, I have come to see, is just his means of 
arriving at definiteness. My uncle wants to do a good 
business, whether in the gross joys of the flesh or in 



So ALVIN JOHNSON 

the benefits of salvation. The Lord's cause, he thinks, 
ought to be as solvent as the world's. A naive view? 
To be sure, but not one that argues a base soul. 

This insistence of my uncle on definiteness, on the 
financial solvency of every enterprise, does to be sure 
get on the nerves of many of us. He'll drop into your 
studio, dispose his long, bony body in your most com- 
fortable chair and ruminate for hours while you work. 
You are immersed in a very significant problem. You 
are at the point, we will say, of discovering how to 
convey the sound of bells by pure color. "May I ask," 
he says finally, "what in thunder are you trying to do?" 
You explain at length, enthusiastically. He hears you 
through, with visible effort to suspend judgment. You 
pause and scan his face for a responsive glow. He rises, 
pats you gently on the shoulder. "My boy, I can put 
you into a good job down in the stockyards. Fine 
prospects, and a good salary to begin with. I ran in 
to see your wife and youngsters yesterday and they're 
looking rather peaked. Not much of a living for them 
in this sort of thing, you know. Of course it is mighty 
interesting. But don't you think you could manage 
to do something with it in your free time?" 

It can't be denied, in the matter of the family relation 
my uncle is hopelessly reactionary. In his view almost 
the whole duty of man is to keep his wife well housed, 
well dressed, contented, and his children plump and 
rosy. To abate a tittle from this requirement my uncle 
regards as pure embezzlement. You try to make him 
see the counterclaims upon you of science, literature, 
art. "Yes, yes, those things are all very fine, but will 
you rob your own wife and children for them?" 

I wonder whether this myopia of my uncle is due 
to the fact that he is a confirmed old bachelor, and all 
women and children are to him pure ideals, as much 



MY UNCLE 



Si 



sweeter than all other ideals as they are more substantial? 
He poses, to be sure, as a depredator of woman. "Just 
like a woman," "women's frivolity," "useless little femi- 
nine trinkets," are phrases always on his lips. But 
watch his caressing expression as he listens to the chatter 
of Cousin Thisbe, the most empty-headed little creature 
who ever wore glowing cheeks and bright curls. Let 
anybody get into trouble with his wife or sweetheart, and 
my uncle straightway takes up the cudgels for the lady. 
The merits of the case don't matter: a lady is always 
right, or if she isn't, it's a mighty mean man who'll insist 
on it. 

His nephews of the blood are firmly convinced that 
the reason why our uncle is such a fool about women in 
general is because he has never been in love with any 
woman in particular. Thus do members of a family 
blind themselves with dogmas about one another. I, 
being more or less of an outsider, can observe without 
preconceptions. Now I assert, in spite of his consistent 
pose of serene indifference to particular charms, my 
uncle's temperament is that of a man forever in love 
with somebody or other. He is strong, he is simple, he 
is pure, and should he escape the dart? Depend on it, 
he has fallen in love not once or twice, but often and 
often. And the probabilities are, he has been loved, 
though not so often. And — this would be an impious 
speculation if I were nephew of the blood — how has he 
behaved, in the rare latter event? As a man in the 
presence of a miracle done for his sole benefit. He has 
exulted, then doubted its reality, then betaken himself 
to the broad prairie, where he is most at home, to cool 
his blood in the north wind, and restore himself to the 
serenity, the freedom from entanglements, befitting an 
uncle at the head of his tribe. This, you say, is all con- 
jecture, deduced from the behavior of those of his 



S 2 ALVIN JOHNSON 

nephews who most resemble him? No. Do you not re- 
call that early affair of his, with the dark vivacious 
lady — Marianne, I believe, was her name? Do you not 
recall a later affair with a very young, cold lady from 
the land of the snows? Do you not recall his maturer 
devotion to the noble lady of the trident, his cousin? 
And — but I'll not descend to idle gossip. 

As you can see, I do not wholly accept my uncle, as 
he is. I wish he weren't so insistent upon reducing 
everything to simple, definite terms, whether it will re- 
duce to such terms or not. I wish he would give more 
thought to making his conduct correct as well as unim- 
peachable. I'm for him when his inferiors laugh at him, 
but I wish he would manage to thwart their malicious de- 
sire to laugh. I wish he were less disposed to scoff gently 
at my attempts to direct his education. Just the same, he 
is the biggest, kindliest, most honest and honorable tribal 
head that ever lived. And you won't find a trace of 
these reservations in the enthusiasm with which I shall 
wish him many thousands of happy returns, next Fourth 
of July. 



WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF 1 
Woodrow Wilson 

It is a very wholesome and regenerating change which 
a man undergoes when he "comes to himself." It is 
not only after periods of recklessness or infatuation, 
when he has played the spendthrift or the fool, that 
a man comes to himself. He comes to himself after 
experiences of which he alone may be aware: when he 
has left off being wholly preoccupied with his own powers 
and interests and with every petty plan that centers in 
himself; when he has cleared his eyes to see the world 
as it is, and his own true place and function in it. 

It is a process of disillusionment. The scales have 
fallen away. He sees himself soberly, and knows under 
what conditions his powers must act, as well as what 
his powers are. He has got rid of earlier prepossessions 
about the world of men and affairs, both those which 
were too favorable and those which were too unfavor- 
able — both those of the nursery and those of a young 
man's reading. He has learned his own paces, or, at 
any rate, is in a fair way to learn them; has found his 
footing and the true nature of the "going" he must look 
for in the world; over what sorts of roads he must expect 
to make his running, and at what expenditure of effort; 
whither his goal lies, and what cheer he may expect by 

1 From The Century Magazine, June, 1901. Copyright iqoi, 
by Harper and Brothers, and published by them in 1015 in a 
volume entitled When a Man Comes to Himself, By per- 
mission of the author and of the publishers. 

53 



54 WOODROW WILSON 

the way. It is a process of disillusionment, but it dis- 
heartens no soundly made man. It brings him into a 
light which guides instead of deceiving him; a light which 
does not make the way look cold to any man whose 
eyes are fit for use in the open, but which shines whole- 
somely, rather, upon the obvious path, like the honest 
rays of the frank sun, and makes traveling both safe 
and cheerful. 

There is no fixed time in a man's life at which he 
comes to himself, and some men never come to them- 
selves at all. It is a change reserved for the thoroughly 
sane and healthy, and for those who can detach them- 
selves from tasks and drudgery long and often enough 
to get, at any rate once and again, view of the propor- 
tions of life and of the stage and plot of its action. We 
speak often with amusement, sometimes with distaste 
and uneasiness, of men who "have no sense of humor," 
who take themselves too seriously, who are intense, self- 
absorbed, over-confident in matters of opinion, or else 
go plumed with conceit, proud of we cannot tell what, 
enjoying, appreciating, thinking of nothing so much as 
themselves. These are men who have not suffered that 
wholesome change. They have not come to themslves. 
If they be serious men, and real forces in the world, we 
may conclude that they have been too much and too long 
absorbed; that their tasks and responsibilities long ago 
rose about them like a flood, and have kept them swim- 
ming with sturdy stroke the years through, their eyes 
level with the troubled surface — no horizon in sight, 
no passing fleets, no comrades but those who struggle 
in the flood like themselves. If they be frivolous, light- 
headed, men without purpose or achievement, we may 
conjecture, if we do not know, that they were born so, 
or spoiled by fortune, or befuddled by self-indulgence. 
It is no great matter what we think of them. 



WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF 55 

It is enough to know that there are some laws which 
govern a man's awakening to know himself and the 
right part to play. A man is the part he plays among his 
fellows. He is not isolated; he cannot be. His life is 
made up of the relations he bears to others — is made 
or marred by those relations, guided by them, judged 
by them, expressed in them. There is nothing else upon 
which he can spend his spirit — nothing else that we 
can see. It is by these he gets his spiritual growth; 
it is by these we see his character revealed, his pur- 
pose, and his gifts. Some play with a certain natural 
passion, an unstudied directness, without grace, without 
modulation, with no study of the masters or consciousness 
of the pervading spirit of the plot; others give all 
their thought to their costume and think only of the 
audience; a few act as those who have mastered the 
secrets of a serious art, with deliberate subordination of 
themselves to the great end and motive of the play, spend- 
ing themselves like good servants, indulging no wilfulness, 
obtruding no eccentricity, lending heart and tone and 
gesture to the perfect progress of the action. These have 
"found themselves," and have all the ease of a perfect 
adjustment. 

Adjustment is exactly what a man gains when he 
comes to himself. Some men gain it late, some early; 
some get it all at once, as if by one distinct act of 
deliberate accommodation; others get it by degrees and 
quite imperceptibly. No doubt to most men it comes 
by the slow processes of experience — at each stage of 
life a little. A college man feels the first shock of it 
at graduation, when the boy's life has been lived out 
and the man's life suddenly begins. He has measured 
himself with boys, he knows their code and feels the 
spur of their ideals of achievement. But what the world 
expects of him he has yet to find out, and it works, 



56 WOODROW WILSON 

when he has discovered it, a veritable revolution in 
his ways both of thought and of action. He finds a 
new sort of fitness demanded of him, executive, thorough- 
going, careful of details, full of drudgery and obedience 
to orders. Everybody is ahead of him. Just now he 
was a senior, at the top of a world he knew and reigned 
in, a finished product and pattern of good form. Of a 
sudden he is a novice again, as green as in his first 
school year, studying a thing that seems to have no 
rules — at sea amid cross-winds, and a bit seasick withal. 
Presently, if he be made of stuff that will shake into 
shape and fitness, he settles to his tasks and is com- 
fortable. He has come to himself: understands what 
capacity is, and what it is meant for; sees that his 
training was not for ornament, or personal gratification, 
but to teach him how to use himself and develop faculties 
worth using. Henceforth there is a zest in action, and 
he loves to see his strokes tell. 

The same thing happens to the lad come from the 
farm into the city, a big and novel field, where crowds 
rush and jostle, and a rustic boy must stand puzzled for 
a little how to use his placid and unjaded strength. It 
happens, too, though in a deeper and more subtle way, 
to the man who marries for love, if the love be true and 
fit for foul weather. Mr. Bagehot used to say that a 
bachelor was "an amateur in life,^ and wit and wisdom 
are married in the jest. A man who lives only for him- 
self has not begun to live — has yet to learn his use, 
and his real pleasure too, in the world. It is not neces- 
sary he should marry to find himself out, but it is 
necessary he should love. Men have come to them- 
selves serving their mothers with an unselfish devotion, 
or their sisters, or a cause for whose sake they forsook 
ease and left off thinking of themselves. It is unselfish 
action, growing slowly into the high habit of devotion, 



WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF 57 

and at last, it may be, into a sort of consecration, that 
teaches a man the wide meaning of his life, and makes 
of him a steady professional in living, if the motive be 
not necessity, but love. Necessity may make a mere 
drudge of a man, and no mere drudge ever made a 
professional of himself; that demands a higher spirit and 
a finer incentive than his. 

Surely a man has come to himself only when he has 
found the best that is in him, and has satisfied his heart 
with the highest achievement he is fit for. It is only 
then that he knows of what he is capable and what his 
heart demands. And, assuredly, no thoughtful man ever 
came to the end of his life, and had time and a little 
space of calm from which to look back upon it, who 
did not know and acknowledge that it was what he had 
done unselfishly and for others, and nothing else, that 
satisfied him in the retrospect, and made him feel that 
he had played the man. That alone seems to him the 
real measure of himself, the real standard of his man- 
hood. And so men grow by having responsibility laid 
upon them, the burden of other people's business. 
Their powers are put out at interest, and they get usury 
in kind. They are like men multiplied. Each counts 
manifold. Men who live with an eye only upon what 
is their own are dwarfed beside them — seem fractions 
while they are integers. The trustworthiness of men 
trusted seems often to grow with the trust. 

It is for this reason that men are in love with power 
and greatness: it affords them so pleasurable an expan- 
sion of faculty, so large a run for their minds, an exer- 
cise of spirit so various and refreshing; they have the 
freedom of so wide a tract of the world of affairs. But 
if they use power only for their own ends, if there be 
no unselfish service in it, if its object be only their per- 
sonal aggrandizement, their love to see other men tools 



58 WOODROW WILSON 

in their hands, they go out of the world small, disquieted, 
beggared, no enlargement of soul vouchsafed them, no 
usury of satisfaction. They have added nothing to 
themselves. Mental and physical powers alike grow by 
use, as every one knows; but labor for one's self alone 
is like exercise in a gymnasium. No healthy man can 
remain satisfied with it, or regard it as anything but a 
preparation for tasks in the open, amid the affairs of the 
world — not sport, but business — where there is no 
orderly apparatus, and every man must devise the means 
by which he is to make the most of himself. To make the 
most of himself means the multiplication of his activities, 
and he must turn away from himself for that. He looks 
about him, studies the face of business or of affairs, 
catches some intimation of their larger objects, is guided 
by the intimation, and presently finds himself part of the 
motive force of communities or of nations. It makes 
no difference how small a part, how insignificant, how 
unnoticed. When his powers begin to play outward, and 
he loves the task at hand not because it gains him a 
livelihood but because it makes him a life, he has come 
to himself. 

Necessity is no mother to enthusiasm. Necessity car- 
ries a whip. Its method is compulsion, not love. It 
has no thought to make itself attractive; it is content 
to drive. Enthusiasm comes with the revelation of true 
and satisfying objects of devotion; and it is enthusiasm 
that sets the powers free. It is a sort of enlightenment. 
It shines straight upon ideals, and for those who see it 
the race and struggle are henceforth toward these. An 
instance will point the meaning. One of the most dis- 
tinguished and most justly honored of our great philan- 
thropists spent the major part of his life absolutely ab- 
sorbed in the making of money — so it seemed to those 
who did not know him. In fact, he had very early 



WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF 59 

passed the stage at which he looked upon his business 
as a means of support or of material comfort. Business 
had become for him an intellectual pursuit, a study in 
enterprise and increment. The field of commerce lay 
before him like a chess-board; the moves interested him 
like the manoeuvres of a game. More money was more 
power, a greater advantage in the game, the means of 
shaping men and events and markets to his own ends 
and uses. It was his will that set fleets afloat and de- 
termined the havens they were bound for; it was his 
foresight that brought goods to market at the right 
time; it was his suggestion that made the industry of 
unthinking men efficacious; his sagacity saw itself justi- 
fied at home not only, but at the ends of the earth. 
And as the money poured in, his government and mastery 
increased, and his mind was the more satisfied. It is 
so that men make little kingdoms for themselves, and 
an international power undarkened by diplomacy, un- 
directed by parliaments. 

It is a mistake to suppose that the great captains of 
industry, the great organizers and directors of manufac- 
ture and commerce and monetary exchange, are engrossed 
in a vulgar pursuit of wealth. Too often they suffer the 
vulgarity of wealth to display itself in the idleness and 
ostentation of their wives and children, who "devote 
themselves," it may be, "to expense regardless of pleas- 
ure"; but we ought not to misunderstand even that, or 
condemn it unjustly. The masters of industry are often 
too busy with their own sober and momentous calling to 
have time or spare thought enough to govern their own 
households. A king may be too faithful a statesman 
to be a watchful father. These men are not fascinated 
by the glitter of gold: the appetite for power has got 
hold upon them. They are in love with the exercise of 
their faculties upon a great scale; they are organizing 



60 WOODROW WILSON 

and overseeing a great part of the life of the world. 
No wonder they are captivated. Business is more inter- 
esting than pleasure, as Mr. Bagehot said, and when once 
the mind has caught its zest, there's no disengaging it. 
The world has reason to be grateful for the fact. 

It was this fascination that had got hold upon the 
faculties of the man whom the world was afterward to 
know, not as a prince among merchants — for the world 
forgets merchant princes — but as a prince among bene- 
factors; for beneficence breeds gratitude, gratitude ad- 
miration, admiration fame, and the world remembers its 
benefactors. Business, and business alone, interested 
him, or seemed to him worth while. The first time he 
was asked to subscribe money for a benevolent object 
he declined. Why should he subscribe? What affair 
would be set forward, what increase of efficiency would 
the money buy, what return would it bring in? Was 
good money to be simply given away, like water poured 
on a barren soil, to be sucked up and yield nothing? It 
was not until men who understood benevolence on its 
sensible, systematic, practical, and really helpful side 
explained it to him as an investment that his mind 
took hold of it and turned to it for satisfaction. He 
began to see that education was a thing of infinite usury; 
that money devoted to it would yield a singular increase, 
to which there was no calculable end, an increase in per- 
petuity — increase of knowledge, and therefore of intelli- 
gence and efficiency, touching generation after generation 
with new impulses, adding to the sum total of the world's 
fitness for affairs — an invisible but intensely real spirit- 
ual usury beyond reckoning, because compounded in an 
unknown ratio from age to age. Henceforward benefi- 
cence was as interesting to him as business — was, 
indeed, a sort of sublimated business in which money- 
moved new forces in a commerce which no man could 
bind or limit. 



WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF 61 

He had come to himself — to the full realization of his 
powers, the true and clear perception of what it was his 
mind demanded for its satisfaction. His faculties were 
consciously stretched to their right measure, were at 
last exercised at their best. He felt the keen zest, not 
of success merely, but also of honor, and was raised to a 
sort of majesty among his fellow-men, who attended him 
in death like a dead sovereign. He had died dwarfed 
had he not broken the bonds of mere money-getting; 
would never have known himself had he not learned 
how to spend it; and ambition itself could not have 
shown him a straighter road to fame. 

This is the positive side of a man's discovery of the 
way in which his faculties are to be made to fit into the 
world's affairs and released for effort in a way that will 
bring real satisfaction. There is a negative side also. 
Men come to themselves by discovering their limitations 
no less than by discovering their deeper endowments 
and the mastery that will make them happy. It is the 
discovery of what they can not do, and ought not to 
attempt, that transforms reformers into statesmen; and 
great should be the joy of the world over every reformer 
who comes to himself. The spectacle is not rare; the 
method is not hidden. The practicability of every re- 
form is determined absolutely and always by "the cir- 
cumstances of the case," and only those who put them- 
selves into the midst of affairs, either by action or by 
observation, can know what those circumstances are or 
perceive what they signify. No statesman dreams of 
doing whatever he pleases; he knows that it does not 
follow that because a point of morals or of policy is 
obvious to him it will be obvious to the nation, or even 
to his own friends; and it is the strength of a democratic 
polity that there are so many minds to be consulted and 
brought to agreement, and that nothing can be wisely 



62 WOODROW WILSON 

done for which the thought, and a good deal more than 
the thought, of the country, its sentiment and its 
purpose, have not been prepared. Social reform is 
a matter of cooperation, and, if it be of a novel 
kind, requires an infinite deal of converting to bring 
the efficient majority to believe in it and support it. 
Without their agreement and support it is impossible. 

It is this that the more imaginative and impatient 
reformers find out when they come to themselves, if that 
calming change ever comes to them. Oftentimes the 
most immediate and drastic means of bringing them to 
themselves is to elect them to legislative or executive 
office. That will reduce over-sanguine persons to their 
simplest terms. Not because they find their fellow legis- 
lators or officials incapable of high purpose or indifferent 
to the betterment of the communities which they repre- 
sent. Only cynics hold that to be the chief reason why 
we approach the millennium so slowly, and cynics are 
usually very ill-informed persons. Nor is it because 
under our modern democratic arrangements we so sub- 
divide power and balance parts in government that no 
one man can tell for much or turn affairs to his will. 
One of the most instructive studies a politician could 
undertake would be a study of the infinite limitations 
laid upon the power of the Russian Czar, notwithstanding 
the despotic theory of the Russian constitution — 
limitations of social habit, of official prejudice, of race 
jealousies, of religious predilections, of administrative 
machinery even, and the inconvenience of being himself 
only one man, and that a very young one, over-sensitive 
and touched with melancholy. He can do only what can 
be done with the Russian people. He can no more 
make them quick, enlightened, and of the modern world 
of the West than he can change their tastes in eating. 
He is simply the leader of Russians. 



WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF 63 

An English or American statesman is better off. He 
leads a thinking nation, not a race of peasants topped 
by a class of revolutionists and a caste of nobles and 
officials. He can explain new things to men able to 
understand, persuade men willing and accustomed to 
make independent and intelligent choices of their own. 
An English statesman has an even better opportunity 
to lead than an Amercian statesman, because in England 
executive power and legislative initiative are both in- 
trusted to the same grand committee, the ministry of 
the day. The ministers both propose what shall be made 
law and determine how it shall be enforced when en- 
acted. And yet English reformers, like American, have 
found office a veritable cold-water bath for their ardor 
for change. Many a man who has made his place in 
affairs as the spokesman of those who see abuses and 
demand their reformation has passed from denunciation 
to calm and moderate advice when he got into Parlia- 
ment, and has turned veritable conservative when made 
a minister of the crown. Mr. Bright was a notable 
example. Slow and careful men had looked upon him 
as little better than a revolutionist so long as his voice 
rang free and imperious from the platforms of public 
meetings. They greatly feared the influence he should 
exercise in Parliament, and would have deemed the con- 
stitution itself unsafe could they have foreseen that he 
would some day be invited to take office and a hand of 
direction in affairs. But it turned out that there was 
nothing to fear. Mr. Bright lived to see almost every 
reform he had urged accepted and embodied in legisla- 
tion; but he assisted at the process of their realization 
with greater and greater temperateness and wise delibera- 
tion as his part in affairs became more and more promi- 
nent and responsible, and was at the last as little like an 
agitator as any man that served the Queen. 



64 WOODROW WILSON 

It is not that such men lose courage when they find 
themselves charged with the actual direction of the 
affairs concerning which they have held and uttered 
such strong, unhesitating, drastic opinions. They have 
only learned discretion. For the first time they see in 
its entirety what it was that they were attempting. 
They are at last at close quarters with the world. Men 
of every interest and variety crowd about them; new im- 
pressions throng them; in the midst of affairs the former 
special objects of their zeal fall into new environments, 
a better and truer perspective; seem no longer suscep- 
tible to separate and radical change. The real nature 
of the complex stuff of life they were seeking to work 
in is revealed to them — its intricate and delicate fiber, 
and the subtle, secret interrelationship of its parts — 
and they work circumspectly, lest they should mar more 
than they mend. Moral enthusiasm is not, uninstructed 
and of itself, a suitable guide to practicable and lasting 
reformation; and if the reform sought be the reformation 
of others as well as of himself the reformer should look 
to it that he knows the true relation of his will to the 
wills of those he would change and guide. When he has 
discovered that relation he has come to himself: has 
discovered his real use and planning part in the general 
world of men; has come to the full command and satis- 
fying employment of his faculties. Otherwise he is 
doomed to live forever in a fools' paradise, and can be 
said to have come to himself only on the supposition 
that he is a fool. 

Every man — if I may adopt and paraphrase a passage 
from Dr. South — every man hath both an absolute and 
a relative capacity; an absolute in that he hath been en- 
dued with such a nature and such parts and faculties ; and 
a relative in that he is part of the universal community of 
men, and so stands in such a relation to the whole. 



WOODROW WILSON 65 

When we say that a man has come to himself, it is not 
of his absolute capacity that we are thinking, but of his 
relative. He has begun to realize that he is part of a 
whole, and to know what part, suitable for what service 
and achievement. 

It was once fashionable — and that not a very long 
time ago — to speak of political society with a certain 
distaste, as a necessary evil, an irritating but inevitable 
restriction upon the "natural" sovereignty and entire 
self-government of the individual. That was the dream 
of the egotist. It was a theory in which men were 
seen to strut in the proud consciousness of their several 
and "absolute" capacities. It would be as instructive 
as it would be difficult to count the errors it has bred in 
political thinking. As a matter of fact, men have never 
dreamed of wishing to do without the "trammels" of 
organized society, for the very good reason that those 
trammels are in reality no trammels at all, but indis- 
pensable aids and spurs to the attainment of the highest 
and most enjoyable things man is capable of. Political 
society, the life of men in states, is an abiding natural 
relationship. It is neither a mere convenience nor a 
mere necessity. It is not a mere voluntary association, 
not a mere corporation. It is nothing deliberate or arti- 
ficial, devised for a special purpose. It is in real truth 
the eternal and natural expression and embodiment of a 
form of life higher than that of the individual — that 
common life of mutual helpfulness, stimulation, and con- 
test which gives leave and opportunity to the individual 
life, makes it possible, makes it full and complete. 

It is in such a scene that man looks about to dis- 
cover his own place and force. In the midst of men 
organized, infinitely cross-related, bound by ties of in- 
terest, hope, affection, subject to authorities, to opinion, 
to passion, to visions and desires which no man can 



66 WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF 

reckon, he casts eagerly about to find where he may enter 
in with the rest and be a man among his fellows. In 
making his place he finds, if he seek intelligently and 
with eyes that see, more than ease of spirit and scope for 
his mind. He finds himself — as if mists had cleared 
away about him and he knew at last his neighborhood 
among men and tasks. 

What every man seeks is satisfaction. He deceives 
himself so long as he imagines it to lie in self-indulgence, 
so long as he deems himself the center and object of 
effort. His mind is spent in vain upon itself. Not in 
action itself, not in "pleasure," shall it find its desires 
satisfied, but in consciousness of right, of powers greatly 
and nobly spent. It comes to know itself in the motives 
which satisfy it, in the zest and power of rectitude. 
Christianity has liberated the world, not as a system of 
ethics, not as a philosophy of altrusion, but by its revela- 
tion of the power of pure and unselfish love. Its vital 
principle is not its code, but its motive. Love, clear- 
sighted, loyal, personal, is its breath and immortality. 
Christ came, not to save himself, assuredly, but to save 
the world. His motive, his example, are every man's 
key to his own gifts and happiness. The ethical code he 
taught may no doubt be matched, here a piece and there 
a piece, out of other religions, other teachings and phil- 
osophies. Every thoughtful man born with a conscience 
must know a code of right and of pity to which he ought 
to conform; but without the motive of Christianity, with- 
out love, he may be the purest altruist and yet be as 
sad and as unsatisfied as Marcus Aurelius. 

Christianity gave us, in the fullness of time, the per- 
fect image of right living, the secret of social and of 
individual well-being; for the two are not separable, and 
the man who receives and verifies that secret in his own 
living has discovered not only the best and only way to 



WOODROW WILSON 67 

serve the world, but also the one happy way to satisfy 
himself. Then, indeed, has he come to himself. Hence- 
forth he knows what his powers mean, what spiritual air 
they breathe, what ardors of service clear them of 
lethargy, relieve them all sense &i effort, put them at 
their best. After this fretfulness passes away, experience 
mellows and strengthens and makes more fit, and old age 
brings, not senility, not satiety, not regret, but higher 
hope and serene maturity. 



EDUCATION THROUGH OCCUPATIONS 1 
William Lowe Bryan 

Young ladies and gentlemen, your chief interest at 
present, as I suppose, is in the occupations which you 
are about to follow. What I have to say falls in line 
with that interest. 

In the outset, I beg to remind you that every im- 
portant occupation has been made what it is by a 
guild — by an ancient guild whose history stretches back 
in direct or indirect succession to the farthest antiquity. 
Every such historic guild of artisans, scholars, lawyers, 
prophets, what not, rose, one may be sure, to meet some 
deep social necessity. In every generation those neces- 
sities were present demanding each the service of its 
share of the population, demanding each the perpetuation 
of its guild. And because in the historic arts and crafts 
and professions mankind has spent in every generation 
all that it had of drudgery or of genius, it has won in 
them its whole estate. The steel mill, the battleship, 
the court of justice, the university — these and the like 
of them are not accidents, nor miracles of individual 
invention, nor products of the vague longings and grop- 
ings of society in general. They are each the product 
of a brotherhood, of generations working to meet one 
social necessity, of an apostolic succession of masters 

1 A commencement address, reprinted from The Spirit of 
Indiana, by William Lowe Bryan. Copyright, 191 7, by the 
Indiana University Bookstore. By permission of the author and 
of the publishers. 

68 



EDUCATION THROUGH OCCUPATIONS 69 

living in the service of one ideal. And so it is these 
brotherhoods of labor, it is these grim brotherhoods 
covered with grime and scars, that stand before you 
to-day inviting you to initiation. 

The fact that an occupation can teach its far-brought 
wisdom to the men of each generation makes civilization 
and progress possible. But this on one condition, that 
many of the people and some of the best of them shall 
be able to make that occupation their life business. 

The law is not in a country when you have imported 
Blackstone's Commentaries and the Statutes of Parlia- 
ment. The law is in a country in the persons of such 
lawyers as are there. It is there in John Marshall. 

Religion is not in a country because we have built a 
church and furnished it with cushions to sleep on once 
a week. It is there in Bishop Brooks and Mr. Moody 
and the Salvation Army. 

The steel business is not in Pittsburgh in an industrial 
museum where the public may gad about on holidays. 
It is there in the men who earn their living by know- 
ing a little better each year how to make armor-plate. 

All this ought to be a matter of course. But there are 
many who think that science and art can be made to 
serve us at a cheaper price, that these stern guilds will 
give up their secret treasures in extension lectures and 
chautauqua clubs and twenty minutes a week in the 
public schools. History will show, I think, that this 
is not true, that no art and no sort of learning was ever 
vitally present among a people unless it was there as a 
living occupation. 

Learning has come to us in this sense only within the 
last quarter-century. We were busy at other things be- 
fore that. Our fathers were doing — as every people 
must — what they had to do. They had to live, to 
establish a government, and to maintain their funda- 



70 WILLIAM LOWE BRYAN 

mental faiths. They bent themselves to these tasks 
with the energy of our breed. And the tasks have 
shaped our national history and character. They gave 
us the Declaration of Independence and the American 
farmer who takes for granted that its principles are true. 
They gave us Chicago, the Amazon who stands yonder 
with / will written upon her shield and a throng of men 
who are fit to serve her will. They gave us a Civil 
War — men who could fight it and afterwards live 
together in peace. They gave us industry, law, democ- 
racy. But not science, not art. These were not wholly 
absent, but they were guests. They were here in the 
persons of a few men who in spite of all difficulties did 
work at them as a life business. 

In this far western village, for example, we had two 
men who brought here the old English classical learning, 
two who more than fifty years ago had been trained 
in the universities of Europe, and one whom the radical 
instinct which set science going in the first place, called 
from a village academy into membership in the inter- 
national guild of scholars. What these men did for 
sound learning and what they did through their pupils 
to uplift every occupation in the State, it is wholly 
beyond our power to measure. But one thing they could 
not do. They could not furnish to society more men 
who should devote themselves to learning than society 
would furnish a living for. And the bare fact is that 
there was a living for very few such men in America 
in the days before the war. Within the past quarter- 
century there has been a change in this respect so 
great that none fails to see it. The millions that we 
have spent upon universities and high schools, the vast 
plant of buildings and libraries and laboratories, fill the 
public eye with amazement. But all this is the husk 
of what has happened. The real thing is that these 



EDUCATION THROUGH OCCUPATIONS 71 

millions, this vast plant, these thousands of positions 
demanding trained men, have brought to life upon this 
ground the guild of scholars. We do not need any more 
to exhort men to become scholars. The spirit which was 
in Thales and Copernicus, in Agassiz and Kirkwood, 
calls to the Hoosier farmboy in its own voice, and shows 
him a clear path by which, if he is fit, he may join their 
great company. 

And, if I am not mistaken, Art, which has also been 
a guest, is ready at last to become a citizen. Why 
should it not? What is lacking? Yonder are the works 
of art and the men who know. Here are the youths 
some share of whom must by right belong to the ser- 
vice of Art. And here are the millions which go to 
support men in every molehole of scientific research and 
other millions spent stupidly and wantonly for what- 
ever the shopkeepers tell us is beautiful. We could 
not create these potential forces that make for art. 
But if it is true that they are here, we can organize them, 
as David Starr Jordan and the like of him less than 
twenty years ago organized the forces that make for 
science. We can make a path through the school and 
the university along which all the children of the State 
may go as far as they will and along which those who 
are fit may enter the artist's life. 

"The mission of society," says Geddes, "is to bring 
to bloom as many sorts of genius as possible." And this 
it can do only when each sort of genius has the chance 
to choose freely its own life occupation. 

Here, as I think, is the program for our educational 
system — to make plain highways from every corner 
of the State to every occupation which history has 
proved good. 



72 WILLIAM LOWE BRYAN 

II 

However, as matters actually stand at present, it 
is your good fortune to have a wide range of occupations 
among which to choose. 

It is no light matter to make the choice. It is to 
elect your physical and social environment. It is to 
choose where you will work — in a scholar's cloister, 
on a farm, or in the cliffs of a city street. It is to 
choose your comrades and rivals. It is to choose what 
you will attend to, what you will try for, whom you 
will follow. In a word, it is to elect for life, for better 
or worse, some one part of the whole social heritage. 
These influences will not touch you lightly. They will 
compass you with subtle compulsions. They will fashion 
your clothes and looks and carriage, the cunning of your 
hands, the texture of your speech, and the temper of 
your will. And if you are wholly willing and wholly 
fit, they can work upon you this miracle: they can 
carry you swiftly in the course of your single life to 
levels of wisdom and skill in one sort, which it has cost 
the whole history of your guild to win. 

But there is, of course, no magic in merely choosing 
an occupation. If you do nothing to an occupation but 
choose it, it can do nothing at all to you. If you are 
an incorrigible lover of holidays, so that the arrival of 
a working-day makes you sick, if every task thrust into 
your hands grows intolerable, if every calling, as soon as 
you have touched its drudgery, grows hateful — that is 
to have the soul of a tramp. It is to be stricken with 
incurable poverty. You turn your back upon every 
company of men where anything worth while is to be 
done. You shut out of yourself every wisdom and skill 
which civilized work develops in a man. And you grow 
not empty but full, choked with evil life. Wretched 



EDUCATION THROUGH OCCUPATIONS 73 

are they that hunger and thirst after nothing good, 
for they also shall be filled. Herein is democracy, that 
whether you are a beggar's son or the son of Croesus 
you cannot escape from yourself — you cannot bribe 
or frighten yourself into being anything else than what 
your own hungers and thirsts have made you. 

It is somewhat better but far from well enough if 
you enter many occupations, but stay in none long enough 
to receive thorough apprenticeship. 

It is so ordered that it is easy for most of us to make 
a fair beginning at almost anything. In the rough and 
tumble of babyhood and youth we all accumulate experi- 
ences which are raw material for any and every occupa- 
tion. So when one of them kindles in you a light blaze 
of curiosity, you have only to pull yourself together, 
you have only to mobilize your forces, and you are 
presently enjoying little successes that surprise and de- 
light you and that may give you the illusion of mastery. 

Doubtless the World Soul knows his own affairs in 
ordering this so. For one thing, the easy initial vic- 
tories are fine baits, lures, by which youths are caught 
and drawn into serious apprenticeship. For another 
thing, the influence of each occupation upon society in 
general must be exercised largely through men who 
carry some intelligence of it into other occupations. 

But if a man flits from one curiosity to another, 
if for fear of being narrow and with the hope of being 
broad, he forsakes every occupation before it can set 
its seal upon him, if he is through and through dilettante, 
jack-of-all-trades, he is a man only less poverty-stricken 
than a tramp. He has the illusion of efficiency. He 
wonders that society generally judges that he is not 
worth his salt, that on every battlefield Hotspur curses 
him for a popinjay, that in every company of master 
workmen met for council he is at most a tolerated guest. 



74 WILLIAM LOWE BRYAN 

The judgment upon him — not my judgment, but the 
judgment which the days thrust in his face — is this: 
that when there is important work to be done he cannot 
do it. He is full of versatility. He knows the alphabet 
of everything — chemistry, engineering, business, law, 
what not. But with all these he cannot bridge the 
Mississippi. He cannot make the steel for the bridge, 
nor calculate the strength of it, nor find the money to 
build it, nor defend its interests in court. These tasks 
fall to men whom twenty years' service in their several 
callings have taught to speak for society at its best. 
And while their work goes on its way, the brilliant man 
who refused every sort of thorough training which 
society could give him, can only stand full of wonder 
and anger that with all his versatilities he is left to 
choose between the drudgery of unskilled labor and 
mere starvation. 

There is another sort of man who will learn little in 
any occupation because he is wholly bent upon being 
original. The past is all wrong, full of errors, absurdi- 
ties, iniquities. To serve apprenticeship is to indoc- 
trinate one's self with pernicious orthodoxies. We must 
rebel. We must begin at the beginning. We must do 
something entirely new and revolutionary. We must 
rely upon our free souls to see and to do the right, as 
it has never been seen or done before. Some such decla- 
ration of independence, some such combination of hope- 
less pessimism about all that has been done, with 
confident optimism about what is just to be done, one 
finds in men of every art, craft, and calling. We are 
to have perpetual motion. We are to square the circle. 
We are to abandon our present political and religious 
and educational institutions and get new and perfect 
ones. Above all, the children must grow up free from the 
whole array of social orthodoxies. We are to escape 



EDUCATION THROUGH OCCUPATIONS 75 

from the whole wretched blundering past and by one 
bold march enter a new Garden of Eden. 

There is something inspiring in this, something that 
stirs the youth like a bugle, and something, as I believe, 
that is essential in every generation for the purification 
of society. The past is as bad as anybody says it is, 
woven full of inconsistency and iniquity. We must 
escape it. We must fight it. And it is no doubt in- 
evitable that there should be some who think that they 
owe it nothing but war. 

And yet, for my part, I am convinced that this is a 
fatally one-sided view of things. Is there in existence 
one great work of any sort which owes nothing to the 
historic guild which does that sort of work? Is there 
one great man in history who gave to the future without 
getting anything from the past? The bare scientific 
fact is that no man escapes the tuition of society. The 
crank does not escape. The freak does not escape. 
They miss the highest traditions of society only to 
become victims of lower traditions. Whether such a 
man have genius or the illusion of genius, it is his 
tragic fate to have the best that he can do lie far below 
the best that society already possesses. 

If one will see what genius without adequate instruc- 
tion comes to, let him look at the case of the mathe- 
matical prodigy, Arthur Griffith. There is what no one 
would refuse to call genius. There is originality, spon- 
taneity, insatiable interest, unceasing labor. And the 
result? A marvelous skill for which society has almost 
no use, and a knowledge of the science of arithmetic 
which is two hundred years behind that of the high 
school graduate. 



76 WILLIAM LOWE BRYAN 

III 

But now that we have told off these three classes 
who will not learn what society has to teach, we have 
happily left most of mankind; certainly, I trust, most 
of you who have submitted to the instruction of society 
thus far. And it is you who are willing to work and 
eager for the best instruction that society can give, whom 
the question of occupations especially concerns. 

And here I beg to have you discriminate between the 
work to which one gives his attention and the great 
swarm of activities physical and mental which are always 
going on in the background. 

A boy who is driving nails into a fence has for the 
immediate task of his eyes and hands the hitting of a 
certain nail on the head. Meanwhile, the rest of the 
boy's body and soul may be full of rebellion and longing 
to be done with the fence on any terms and away at the 
fishing. Or instead of that the whole boy may be full 
of pride in what he has done and of resolution to drive 
the last nail as true as the first. Which of these two 
things is the more important — the task in the fore- 
ground or the disposition in the background — I do not 
know. They cannot be separated. They are both 
present in every waking hour, weaving together the 
threads of fate. 

A man's life is not wholly fortunate unless all that 
is within him rises gladly to join in the work that he 
has to do. 

It is, however, unhappily true that many good and 
useful men are forced by circumstances to work at one 
thing, while their hearts are tugging to be at something 
else. They have not chosen their tasks. They have 
been driven by necessity. There must be bread. There 
are the wife and the children. There is no escape. It is 



EDUCATION THROUGH OCCUPATIONS 77 

up with the sun. It is bearing the burden and heat of 
the day. It is intolerable weariness. It is worse than 
that. It is tramping round and round in the same 
hated steps until you cannot do anything else. You 
cannot think of anything else. They sound in your 
dreams — those treadmill steps arousing echoes of 
bitterness and rebellion. You cannot escape from your- 
self. You cannot take a vacation. You may grow 
rich and travel far and spend desperately, but the 
baleful music will follow you to the end, the music of 
the work you did in hate. This is the tragedy of 
drudgery, not that you spend your time and strength at 
it, but that you lose yourself in it. 

But at the worst this man is no such poverty-stricken 
soul as the crank, the tramp, or the jack-of-all-trades. 
If his occupation was worth while, those hated habits 
are far from deserving hate. If they are habits by which 
a man may live, by which one may give a service that 
other men need and will pay for, their value is certified 
from the sternest laboratory. The drudge has a right 
to respect himself. He has the right to the respect of 
other men and I give mine without reserve. I say that 
he who holds himself grimly for life to a useful common- 
place work which he hates, is heroic. It is easy to be 
heroic on horseback. To be heroic on foot in the dust, 
lost in the crowd, with no applause — that is the heroism 
which has borne up and carried forward most of the 
work of civilization. 

IV 

We honor the drudge, but deplore his fate. And yet 
there are many who believe that there is in fact no 
other fate for any man; that every business is in the 
long run a belittling business; that whether you are a 
hodcarrier or a poet, as you go on in your calling, 



78 WILLIAM LOWE BRYAN 

"shades of the prison-house" will close upon you and 
custom lie upon you "heavy as frost and deep almost as 
life." 

Let us look at this deep pessimism at its darkest. 
The imperfect, that is everywhere. That is all that 
you can see or work at. That is the warp and woof of 
all your occupations and institutions, your politics, your 
science, your religion. They are all nearly as bad as 
they are good. Your science has forever to disown 
its past. Your politics demands that you shall be 
particeps criminis in its evil as the price of a position 
in which you can exert any influence. Your historic 
church is almost as full of Satan as of Christ. And when 
you have spent your bit of life in any of these institu- 
tions or occupations, they are not perfect as you had 
hoped. 

You emancipate the slaves and the negro question 
still looks you in the face. You invent printing and 
then must say with Browning's Fust, "Have I brought 
man advantage or hatched so to speak a strange ser- 
pent?" 

You establish a new brotherhood for the love of Christ, 
and presently they are quarreling which shall be chief 
or perhaps haling men to prison in the name of Him 
who came to let the oppressed go free. 

And you, yourself, for reward will be filled with the 
Everlasting Imperfect which your eyes have seen and 
your hands have handled. 

The essential tragedy of life, according to this deep 
pessimism, is not in pain and defeat, but in the empti- 
ness and vanity of all that we call victory. 

Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, 
and on the labor that I had labored to do; and, behold, all was 
vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under 
the sun. 



EDUCATION THROUGH OCCUPATIONS 79 

V 

I suppose that every man's faith is the outgrowth of 
his disposition, and mine makes me believe that the 
truth embraces all the blackest of this pessimism and 
also the victory over it. I admit and declare that our 
case is as bad as anybody has found it to be. In a 
generation which soothes itself with the assurance that 
there is no hell, I am one who fears that its fire is leap- 
ing through every artery of society. 

And yet I have never a doubt that there is a spirit 
which may lead a man through any calling always into 
more of the life and freedom of the Kingdom of God. 

For one thing, it is necessary that your calling at its 
best, the best that it has done, the best that it may do, 
should lay before you a program of tasks, the first of 
them lying definitely before you and within your power, 
the others stretching away into all that a man can do 
in that sort. This is no treadmill. This is a ladder, 
resting on the ground, stretching toward heaven. 

For another thing, you must delight in your work. 
Your heart and body must be in it and not tugging to 
be away at something else. You do not then deal out 
to each bit of work its stingy bit of your attention. 
You delight in the thing. You hover and brood over 
it like a lover and lavish upon it the wealth of un- 
counted hours. 

The sure consequence is that you are not doing the 
same things over and over and grooving the same habits 
deeper and deeper. Habits cannot stand in this heat. 
They fuse and flow together. They are no longer 
chains. They are wings. They lift you up and bear 
you swiftly and joyfully forward. 

This is indeed the life of joy. You have the joy of 
efficiency. You have the joy of doing the best you had 



80 WILLIAM LOWE BRYAN 

hoped to do. And it may be that once and again you 
will be set shaking with delight because something within 
you has turned out a better bit of work than you had 
thought possible. 

And if, besides all this, the background of feeling 
and will in you is wholly right; if, by the grace of God, 
you have learned to work in delicate veracity, stern 
against yourself, loyal to the Perfection whose veils 
no man has lifted; if the far vision of that Perfection 
touches you with humility, mans you with courage, 
and makes you leap glad to meet the tasks which 
are set for you, — what is this but entrance here and 
now into the Kingdom of God? 

And if this crowning grace comes to you, as it may 
in any calling — it came to Uncle Tom — you will not, 
I think, believe that all your hands have wrought is 
vanity. You will not believe that the Logos who has 
called our race out of the earth to behold and share 
in his creation is a dream, a mockery of our despair, 
as we make the last useless turns about the dying sun. 
But you will see that He knew the truth of things who 
said: 

My Father worketh hitherto and I work. The works that 
I do shall ye do also and greater works than these shall ye do 
because I go to the Father. 



THE FALLOW 1 
John Agricola 

In a book on "Roman Farm Management" containing 
translations of Cato and Varro by a "Virginia Farmer" 
(who happens also to be an American railroad president), 
there is quoted in the original Latin a proverb whose 
practice not only gave basis for the proud phrase 
"Romanus sum" but also helped to make the Romans 
" a people of enduring achievement." It is "Romanus 
sedendo vincit" For, as this new- world farmer adds 
by way of translation and emphasis, "The Romans 
achieved their results by thoroughness and patience." 
"It was thus," he continues, "they defeated Hannibal, 
and it was thus that they built their farmhouses and 
fences, cultivated their fields, their vineyards and their 
olive yards, and bred and fed their livestock. They 
seemed to have realized that there are no shortcuts in 
the processes of nature and that the law of compensa- 
tions is invariable." "The foundation of their agricul- 
ture," he asserts, "was the fallow" ; and concludes, com- 
menting upon this, that while "one can find instruction 
in their practice even to-day, one can benefit even more 
from their agricultural philosophy, for the characteristic 
of the American farmer is that he is in too much of a 
hurry." 

This is only by way of preface to saying that the 
need in our educational philosophy, or, at any rate, in 

1 By permission of the author, John Finley. 
81 



82 JOHN AGRICOLA 

our educational practice, as in agriculture, is the 
need of the fallow. 

It will be known to philologists, even to those who 
have no agricultural knowledge, that the " fallow field" 
is not an idle field, though that is the popular notion. 
"Fallow" as a noun meant originally a "harrow," and as a 
verb, "to plough," "to harrow." "A fallow field is a field 
ploughed and tilled," but left unsown for a time as to the 
main crop of its productivity; or, in better modern prac- 
tice, I believe, sown to a crop valuable not for what it will 
bring in the market (for it may be utterly unsalable), 
but for what it will give to the soil in enriching it for 
its higher and longer productivity. 

I employ this agricultural metaphor not in ignorance; 
for I have, out on these very prairies, read between corn- 
husking and the spring ploughing Virgil's Georgics and 
Bucolics, for which Varro's treatises furnished the founda- 
tions. And I have also, on these same prairies, carried 
Horace's Odes, in the spring, to the field with me, 
strapping the book to the plough to read while the horses 
rested at the furrow's end. 

Xor do I employ this metaphor demeaningly. Nothing 
has so glorified for me my youthful days on these prairies 
as the associations which the classics, including the Bible, 
gave to them on the farm; and also in the shop, I may 
add, for it was in the shop, as well as on the farm, that 
I had their companionship. When learning the printer's 
trade, while a college student, I set up in small pica my 
translation of the daily allotment of the Prometheus 
Bound of Aeschylus, and that dark and dingy old shop 
became the world of the Titan who "manward sent 
Art's mighty means and perfect rudiment," the place 
where the divine in man "defied the invincible gesture of 
necessity." And nothing can so glorify the classics as 
to bring them into the field and into the shop and let 



THE FALLOW 83 

them become woven into the tasks that might else seem 
monotonous or menial. 

In a recent editorial in the New York Times it was said 
that the men and the times of Aristophanes were much 
more modern than the administration of Rutherford 
B. Hayes. But this was simply because Aristophanes 
immortally portrayed the undying things in human na- 
ture, whereas the issues associated with this particular 
administration were evanescent. The immortal is, of 
course, always modern, and the classic is the immortal, 
the timeless distillation of human experience. 

But I wander from my thesis which is that the classics 
are needed as the fallow to give lasting and increasing 
fertility to the natural mind out upon democracy's great 
levels, into which so much has been washed down and 
laid down from the Olympic mountains and eternal hills 
of the classical world. 

In the war days we naturally ignored the fallow. We 
cultivated with Hooverian haste. It was necessary to 
put our soil in peril of exhaustion even as we put our 
men in peril of death. Forty million added acres were 
commandeered, six billions of bushels of the leading 
cereals were added to the annual product of earlier sea- 
sons. The land could be let to think only of immediate 
defense. Crops only could be grown which would help 
promptly to win the war. Vetch and clover and all else 
that permanently enriched must be given up for war 
gardening or war farming. The motto was not Ameri- 
canus sedendo vincit but Americanus accelerando vincit. 

But on this day of my writing (the day of the signing 
of the peace) I am thinking that in agriculture and in 
education as well, we must again turn our thoughts to 
the virtues of thoroughness and patience — the virtues 
of the fallow, that is, to ploughing and harrowing and 
tilling, not for the immediate crop, but for the enrich- 



84 JOHN AGRICOLA 

ment of the soil and of the mind, according as our 
thought is of agriculture or education. 

Cato, when asked what the first principle of good agri- 
culture was, answered "To plough well." When asked 
what the second was, replied "To plough again." And 
when asked what the third was, said "To apply ferti- 
lizer." And a later Latin writer speaks of the farmer 
who does not plough thoroughly as one who becomes a 
mere "clodhopper." You will notice that it is not sow- 
ing, nor hoeing after the sowing, but ploughing that is 
the basic operation. 

It is the sowing, however, that is popularly put first 
in our agricultural and educational theory. "A sower 
went forth to sow." A teacher went forth to teach, 
that is, to scatter information, facts: — arithmetical, his- 
torical, geographical, linguistic facts. But the emphasis 
of the greatest agricultural parable in our literature was 
after all not on the sowing but on the soil, on that upon 
which or into which the seed fell, — or as it might be 
better expressed, upon the fallow. It was only the fal- 
low ground, the ground that had been properly cleared 
of stones, thorns, and other shallowing or choking en- 
cumbrances, that gave point to the parable. It was the 
same seed that fell upon the stony, thorny, and fallow 
ground alike. 

There is a time to sow, to sow the seed for the special 
crop you want; but it is after you have ploughed the 
field. There is a time to specialize, to give the informa- 
tion which the life is to produce in kind; but it is when 
you have thoroughly prepared the mind by its ploughing 
disciplines. 

I have lately seen the type of agriculture practised out 
in the fields that were the Scriptural cradle of the race. 
There the ploughing is but the scratching of the surface. 
Indeed, the sowing is on the top of the ground and the 



THE FALLOW 85 

so-called ploughing or scratching in with a crooked stick 
comes after. Contrast this with the deep ploughing of 
the West, and we have one explanation at least of the 
greater productivity of the West. And there is the edu- 
cational analogue here as well. In those homelands of 
the race, the seed of the mind is sown on the surface and 
is scratched in by oral and choral repetitions. The mind 
that receives it is not ploughed, is not trained to think. 
It merely receives and with shallow root, if it be not 
scorched, gives back its meager crop. 

There must be ploughing before the sowing, and deep 
ploughing if things with root are to find abundant life 
and fruit. And the classics to my thought furnish the 
best ploughs for the mind, — at any rate for minds that 
have depth of soil. For shallow minds, "where there is 
not much depth of earth," where, because there cannot 
be much root, that which springs up withers away, it 
were perhaps not worth while to risk this precious imple- 
ment. And then, too, there are geniuses whose fertility 
needs not the same stirring disciplines. There are also 
other ploughs, but as a ploughman I have found none 
better for English use than the plough which has the 
classical name, the plough which reaches the sub-soil, 
which supplements the furrowing ploughs in bringing to 
the culture of our youthful minds that which lies deep in 
the experience of the race. 

There are many kinds of fallow as I have already 
intimated. The more modern is not the "bare fallow" 
which lets the land so ploughed and harrowed lie unsown 
even for a season, but the fallow, of varied name, where 
the land is sown to crops whose purpose is to gather the 
free nitrogen back into the ground for its enrichment. 
So is our fallowing by the classics not only to prepare 
the ground, clear it of weeds, aerate it, break up the 
clods, but also to enrich it by bringing back into the 



86 JOHN AGRICOLA 

mind of the youth of to-day that which has escaped 
into the air of the ages past through the great human 
minds that have lived and loved upon this earth and laid 
themselves down into its dust to die. 

In New York City, a young man, born out upon the 
prairies, was lying, as it was thought, near to death, in 
a hospital. He turned to the nurse and asked what 
month it was. She answered that it was early May. 
He thought of the prairies, glorified to him by Horace's 
Odes. He heard the frogs in the swales amid the virgin 
prairie flowers as Aristophanes had heard them in the 
ponds of Greece. He saw the springing oats in a neigh- 
boring field that should furnish the pipes for the winds 
of Pan. He saw, as the dying poet Ibycus, the cranes 
go honking overhead. And he said, "I can't die now. 
It's ploughing time." 



It is "ploughing time" for the world again, and plough- 
ing time not only because we turn from instruments of 
war to those of peace, symbolized since the days of 
Isaiah by the "ploughshares" beaten from swords, but 
because we must turn to the cultivation with thorough- 
ness and patience not only of our acres but of the minds 
that are alike to have world horizons in this new season 
of the earth. 

Amos prophesied that in the day of restoration "the 
ploughman would overtake the reaper." War's grim 
reaper is quitting the field to-day. The ploughman has 
overtaken him. May he remember the law of the "fal- 
low" and not be in too great a hurry. 



WRITING AND READING 1 
John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert 

Do you like to write? Probably not. What have you 
tried to write? Probably "themes." 

The "theme" is a literary form invented by teachers of 
rhetoric for the education of students in the art of writ- 
ing. It does not exist outside the world of school and 
college. No editor ever accepted a "theme." No "theme" 
was ever delivered from a rostrum, or spoken at a dinner, 
or bound between the covers of a book in the hope that 
it might live for centuries. In a word, a "theme" is 
first and last a product of "composition" — a laborious 
putting together of ideas, without audience and without 
purpose, hated alike by student and by instructor. Its 
sole use is to exemplify the principles of rhetoric. But 
rhetoric belongs to the past as much as the toga and 
the snuffbox; it is an extinct art, the art of cultivating 
style according to the mannerisms of a vanished age. 

Forget that you ever wrote a "theme," and ask your- 
self now: "Should I like to write?" Of course you 
would — if you could. And you can. You have had, 
and you will have, some experiences that will not be 
repeated exactly in any other life — that no one else 
can express exactly as you would express them. And the 
art of expressing what you have experienced, what you 

1 From The Writing of English, by John Matthews Manly and 
Edith Rickert. Copyright, iqiq, by Henry Holt and Co. By 
permission of the authors and of the publishers. 

87 



88 JOHN M. MANLEY AND EDITH RICKERT 

think, what you feel, and what you believe, can be 
learned. 

If you stop to consider the matter, you will realize 
that self-expression is one of the laws of life; you do 
express yourself day after day, whether you will or not. 
Hence, the more quickly you learn that successful self- 
expression is the source of one of the greatest pleasures 
in life, the more readily will you be able to turn your 
energy in the right direction, and the more fun will you 
get out of the process. The kind of delight that comes 
through self-expression of the body, through the play 
of the muscles in running or hurdling, through the play 
of muscles and mind together in football or baseball or 
tennis or golf, comes also through the exercise of the 
mind alone in talk or in writing. 

Remember always throughout this course, that you 
have something to say — something peculiar to yourself 
that should be contributed to the sum of the world's 
experience, something that cannot be contributed by 
anyone but yourself. It may be much or it may be little: 
with that you are not concerned at present; your busi- 
ness now is to find out how to say it ; how to clear away 
the obstacles that clog self-expression; how to give your 
mind free swing; and how to get all the fun there is in 
the process. 

The initial problems in learning to write are: How can 
you get at this store of material hidden within you? 
and how can you know when you have found it? Your 
experience, however interesting, is as yet very limited. 
How can you tell which phases of it deserve expression, 
and which are mere commonplace? The quickest way 
to answer this question is by reading. Reading will tell 
you which phases of experience have been commonly 
treated and which have been neglected. Moreover, as 
you read you will be surprised to find that very often 



WRITING AND READING 89 

the features of your life which seem to you peculiarly 
interesting are exactly those that are commonly — and 
even cheaply — written about, while those which you 
have passed over as not worth attention may be aspects of 
life that other people too have passed over; they may 
therefore be fresh and well worth writing about. For 
instance, within the last twenty-five years we have had 
two writers, Joseph Conrad and John Masefield, writing 
of the sea as it has never been written of before. Both 
have been sailors; and both have utilized their experience 
as viewed through the medium of their temperaments in 
a way undreamed of before. Again, within the last 
ten years we have had Algernon Blackwood, using his 
imagination to apply psychology to the study of the 
supernatural, and so developing a field peculiar to him- 
self. Still again, H. G. Wells, who began his career as 
a clerk and continued as a teacher of science, has found 
in both these phases of his experience a mine of literary 
wealth; and Arnold Bennett, born and educated in the 
dreariest, most unpicturesque, apparently least inspiring, 
part of England, has seen in the very prosiness of the 
Five Towns untouched material, and has given this an 
enduring place in literature. In your imagination there 
may lie the basis of fantasies as yet unexpressed; or in 
your experience, aspects of life that have not as yet 
been adequately treated. As you read you will find 
that until recently the one phase of life most exploited 
in literature was the romantic love of youth; this was 
the basis of nearly all novels and of most short stories; 
its presence was demanded for either primary or second- 
ary interest in the drama; and it was the chief source of 
inspiration for the lyric. But within the last thirty 
years all sorts of other subjects have been opened up. 
To-day the writer's difficulty is, not that he is restricted 
by literary convention in his choice of material, but 



90 JOHN M. MANLEY AND EDITH RICKERT 

that he is so absolutely unrestricted that he may be in 
doubt where to make his choice. He is, to be sure, 
conditioned in two ways: To do the best work, he 
must keep within the bounds of his own temperament 
and experience; and he should as far as possible avoid 
phases of life already written about, unless he can present 
them under some new aspect. 

With these conditions in mind, you are ready to ask 
yourself: What have I to write about? Let us put 
the question more concretely: Have you lived, for in- 
stance, in a little mining town in the West? Such a 
little town, with its saloons and automatics and flannel- 
shirted hero, stares at us every month from the pages of 
popular magazines. But perhaps your little mining town 
is dry, perhaps there has not been a shooting fray in it 
for ten years, and all the young men go to Bible class 
on Sunday. Well, here is something new; let us have it. 
Is New York your home? The magazines tell you 
that New York is parceled out among a score of writers: 
the Italian quarter, the Jewish quarter, the Syrian quar- 
ter, the boarding-houses, Wall Street. What is there 
left? The suburbs? Surely not; and yet have you ever 
seen a story of just your kind of street and just the 
kind of people that you know? If not, here is your 
opportunity. 

You have read about sailors, fishermen, farmers, de- 
tectives, Italian fruit-peddlers, Jewish clothes-merchants, 
commercial travelers, financiers, salesmen and sales- 
women, doctors, clergymen, heiresses, and men about 
town, but have you often read a thrilling romance of 
a filing clerk? How about the heroism of a telephone 
collector? the humors of a street-car conductor? The 
seeing eye will find material in the street car, in the 
department store, in the dentist's waiting room, in 
college halls, on a lonely country road — anywhere and 



WRITING AND READING 91 

everywhere. And the seeing eye is cultivated by a per- 
petual process of comparing life as it is with life as it 
is portrayed in literature and in art. In other words, 
to get material to write about, you must cultivate alert- 
ness to the nature and value of your own life-experience, 
and to the nature and value of all forms of life with 
which you come into contact; but this you can never 
do with any degree of success unless you at the same 
time learn how to read. 

You may say that you know how to read. It is almost 
certain that you do not. If by reading you mean that 
you can run your eye over a page, and, barring a word 
here and there, get the general drift of the sense, you 
may perhaps qualify as able to read. If you are set 
the task of interpreting fully every phrase in an article 
by a thoughtful writer, the chances are that you will 
fail. When only a small part of a writer's meaning has 
passed from his mind to yours, you can hardly be said 
to have read what he has written. On the other hand, 
no one can get out of written words all that was put 
into them. What was written out of one man's experi- 
ence must be interpreted by another's experience; and 
as no two people ever have exactly the same experience — 
no two people are exactly alike — it follows that no 
interpretation is ever entirely what the writer had in 
mind. The ratio between what goes into a book and 
what comes out of it varies in two ways. Granted the 
same reader, he will take only to the limit of his capac- 
ity from any book set before him: he may get almost 
all from a book that contains but little, a good share 
of a book that contains much, but very little of a book 
that is far beyond the range of his experience. Granted 
the same book, one reader will barely skim its surface, 
another will gain a fair idea of the gist of it, a third 
will almost relieve it with the author. 



92 JOHN M. MANLEY AND EDITH RICKERT 

The main point is that this varying ratio depends upon 
the amount of life-experience that goes into the writing 
of a book and the amount of life-experience that goes 
into the reading of it. For as writing is the expression 
of life, so reading is vicarious living — living by proxy, 
reliving in imagination what the author has lived before 
he was able to write it. Hence, we grow up to books, 
grow into them, grow out of them. Our growing experi- 
ence of life may be measured by the books that we read; 
and conversely, as we cannot have all experience in our 
own lives, books are necessarily one of the most fruitful 
sources of growth in experience. 

This is true, however, only of what may be called 
vitalized reading — reading, not with the eyes alone, nor 
with the mind alone, but with the stored experiences of 
life, with the emotions that it has brought, with the atti- 
tudes toward men and things and ideas that it has given — 
in a word, with imagination. To read with imagination, 
you must be, in the first place, active; in the second place, 
sensitive, and, because you are sensitive, receptive. In- 
stead, however, of being merely passively receptive of 
the stream of ideas and images and sensations flowing 
from the work you are reading, you must be alert to 
take all that it has to give, and to re-create this in 
terms of your own experience. Thus by making it a 
part of your imaginative experience, you widen your 
actual experience, you enrich your life, and you increase 
the flexibility and vital power of your mind. 

In order, then, to tap the sources of your imagination, 
you must learn to experience in two ways: first, through 
life itself, not so much by seeking experiences different 
from those that naturally come your way, as by becom- 
ing aware of the value of those that belong naturally to 
your life; and second, through learning to absorb and 
transmute the life that is in books, beginning with those 



WRITING AND READING 93 

that stand nearest to your stage of development. In 
the process of reading you will turn more and more to 
those writers who have a larger mastery of life, and who, 
by their skill in expressing the wisdom and beauty that 
they have made their own, can admit you, when you are 
ready, to some share in that mastery. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 1 
Bliss Perry 

Two Harvard men, teachers of English in the Uni- 
versity of North Carolina, have recently published a new 
kind of textbook for undergraduates. Abandoning the 
conventional survey of literary types and the examination 
of literary history in the narrow sense of those words, 
they present a program of ideas, the dominant ideas of 
successive epochs in the life of England and America. 
They direct the attention of the young student, not so 
much to canons of art as to noteworthy expressions of 
communal thought and feeling, to the problems of self- 
government, of noble discipline, of ordered liberty. The 
title of this book is The Great Tradition. The funda- 
mental idealism of the Anglo-Saxon race is illustrated 
by passages from Bacon and Raleigh, Spenser and 
Shakespeare. But William Bradford, as well as Crom- 
well and Milton, is chosen to represent the seventeenth- 
century struggle for faith and freedom. In the eigh- 
teenth century, Washington and Jefferson and Thomas 
Paine appear side by side with Burke and Burns and 
Wordsworth. Shelley and Byron, Tennyson and Car- 
lyle are here of course, but with them are John Stuart 
Mill and John Bright and John Morley. There are 

x An address delivered at the exercises held by the Cambridge 
Historical Society in Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, Feb. 
22, 1919, to commemorate the centenary of Lowell's birth. By 
permission of Professor Perry and of the editor of the Harvard 
Graduates* Magazine. Copyright, 1919, by The Harvard Gradu- 
ates' Magazine. 

94 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 95 

passages from Webster and Emerson, from Lowell and 
Walt Whitman and Lincoln, and finally, from the elo- 
quent lips of living men — from Lloyd George and Arthur 
Balfour and Viscount Grey and President Wilson — 
there are pleas for international honor and international 
justice and for a commonwealth of free nations. 

It is a magnificent story, this record of Anglo-Saxon 
idealism during four hundred years. The six or seven 
hundred pages of the book which I have mentioned are 
indeed rich in purely literary material ; in the illustration 
of the temper of historic periods; in the exhibition of 
changes in language and in literary forms. The lover 
of sheer beauty in words, the analyzer of literary types, 
the student of biography, find here ample material for 
their special investigations. But the stress is laid, not 
so much upon the quality of individual genius, as upon 
the political and moral instincts of the English-speaking 
races, their long fight for liberty and democracy, their 
endeavor to establish the terms upon which men may 
live together in society. And precisely here, I take it, 
is the significance of the pages which Professors Green- 
law and Hanford assign to James Russell Lowell. The 
man whom we commemorate to-night played his part 
in the evolution which has transformed the Elizabethan 
Englishman into the twentieth-century American. 
Lowell was an inheritor and an enricher of the Great 
Tradition. 

This does not mean that he did not know whether he 
was American or English. He wrote in 1866 of certain 
Englishmen: "They seem to forget that more than half 
the people of the North have roots, as I have, that 
run down more than two hundred years deep into this 
new-world soil — that we have not a thought nor a hope 
that is not American." In 1876, when his political 
independence made him the target of criticism, he re- 



96 BLISS PERRY 

plied indignantly: "These fellows have no notion what 
love of country means. It is in my very blood and 
bones. If I am not an American, who ever was?" 

It remains true, nevertheless, that Lowell's life and his 
best writing are keyed to that instinct of personal dis- 
cipline and civic responsibility which characterized the 
seventeenth century emigrants from England. These 
successors of Roger Ascham and Thomas Elyot and 
Philip Sidney were Puritanic, moralistic, practical; and 
with their "faith in God, faith in man and faith in 
work" they built an empire. LowelPs own mind, like 
Franklin's, like Lincoln's, had a shrewd sense of what 
concerns the common interests of all. The inscription 
beneath his bust on the exterior of Massachusetts Hall 
runs as follows: "Patriot, scholar, orator, poet, public 
servant." Those words begin and end upon that civic 
note which is heard in all of Lowell's greater utterances. 
It has been the dominant note of much of the American 
writing that has endured. And it is by virtue of this 
note, touched so passionately, so nobly, throughout 
a long life, that Lowell belongs to the elect company 
of public souls. 

No doubt we have had in this country distinguished 
practitioners of literature who have stood mainly or 
wholly outside the line of the Great Tradition. They 
drew their inspiration elsewhere. Poe, for example, is 
not of the company; Hawthorne in his lonelier moods is 
scarcely of the company. In purely literary fame, these 
names may be held to outrank the name of James Russell 
Lowell; as Emerson outranks him, of course, in range of 
vision, Longfellow in craftsmanship, and Walt Whitman 
in sheer power of emotion and of phrase. But it happens 
that Lowell stands with both Emerson and Whitman in 
the very centre of that group of poets and prose-men 
who have been inspired by the American idea. They 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 97 

were all, as we say proudly nowadays, "in the service," 
and the particular rank they may have chanced to win 
is a relatively insignificant question, except to critics 
and historians. 

The centenary of the birth of a writer who reached 
three score and ten is usually ill-timed for a proper per- 
spective of his work. A generation has elapsed since 
his death. Fashions have changed; writers, like bits 
of old furniture, have had time to "go out" and not time 
enough to come in again. George Eliot and Ruskin, for 
instance, whose centenaries fall in this year, suffer the 
dark reproach of having been "Victorians." The cen- 
tenaries of Hawthorne and Longfellow and Whittier were 
celebrated at a period of comparative indifference to 
their significance. But if the present moment is still 
too near to Lowell's life-time to afford a desirable literary 
perspective, a moral touchstone of his worth is close at 
hand. In this hour of heightened national conscious- 
ness, when we are all absorbed with the part which the 
English-speaking races are playing in the service of the 
world, we may surely ask whether Lowell's mind kept 
faith with his blood and with his citizenship, or whether, 
like many a creator of exotic, hybrid beauty, he remained 
an alien in the spiritual commonwealth, a homeless, mas- 
terless man. 

No one needs to speak in Cambridge of Lowell's de- 
votion to the community in which he was born and in 
which he had the good fortune to die. In some of his 
most delightful pages he has recorded his affection for 
it. Yonder in the alcoves of Harvard Hall, then the 
College Library, he discovered many an author unrepre- 
sented among his father's books at Elmwood. In Uni- 
versity Hall he attended chapel — occasionally. In the 
open space between Hollis and Holden he read his "Com- 
memoration Ode." He wrote to President Hill in 1863: 



98 BLISS PERRY 

"Something ought to be done about the trees in the 
Yard." He loved the place. It was here in Sanders 
Theatre that he pronounced his memorable address at 
the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding 
of the College — an address rich in historic background, 
and not without solicitude for the future of his favorite 
humanistic studies — a solicitude, some will think, only 
too well justified. "Cambridge at all times is full of 
ghosts," said Emerson. But no ghost from the past, 
flitting along the Old Road from Elmwood to the Yard, 
and haunting the bleak lecture-rooms where it had re- 
cited as a careless boy and taught wearily as a man, 
could wear a more quizzical and friendly aspect than 
Lowell's. He commonly spoke of his life as a professor 
with whimsical disparagement, as Henry Adams wrote of 
his own teaching with a somewhat cynical disparagement. 
But the fact is that both of these self-depreciating New 
Englanders were stimulating and valuable teachers. 
From his happily idle boyhood to the close of his fruit- 
ful career, Lowell's loyalty to Cambridge and Harvard 
was unalterable. Other tastes changed after wider ex- 
perience with the world. He even preferred, at last, 
the English blackbird to the American bobolink, but the 
Harvard Quinquennial Catalogue never lost its savor, 
and in the full tide of his social success in London he 
still thought that the society he had enjoyed at the 
Saturday Club was the best society in the world. To 
deracinate Lowell was impossible, and it was for this 
very reason that he became so serviceable an interna- 
tional personage. You knew where he stood. It was 
not for nothing that his roots ran down two hundred 
years deep. He was the incarnation of his native soil. 
Lowell has recently been described, together with 
Whittier, Emerson, and others, as an "English provincal 
poet — in the sense that America still was a literary prov- 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 99 

ince of the mother country ." To this amazing state- 
ment one can only rejoin that if "The Biglow Papers," 
the "Harvard Commemoration Ode," "Under the Old 
Elm," the "Fourth of July Ode," and the Agassiz elegy 
are English provincial poetry, most of us need a new 
map and a new vocabulary. Of both series of "Biglow 
Papers" we may surely exclaim, as did Quintilian con- 
cerning early Roman satire, "This is wholly ours." It 
is true that Lowell, like every young poet of his genera- 
tion, had steeped himself in Spenser and the other 
Elizabethans. They were his literary ancestors by as 
indisputable an inheritance as a Masefield or a Kipling 
could claim. He had been brought up to revere Pope. 
Then he surrendered to Wordsworth and Keats and 
Shelley, and his earlier verses, like the early work of 
Tennyson, are full of echoes of other men's music. It 
is also true that in spite of his cleverness in versifying, 
or perhaps because of it, he usually showed little inven- 
tiveness in shaping new poetic patterns. His tastes were 
conservative. He lacked that restless technical curiosity 
which spurred Poe and Whitman to experiment with 
new forms. But Lowell revealed early extraordinary 
gifts of improvisation, retaining the old tunes of English 
verse as the basis for his own strains of unpremediated 
art. He wrote "A Fable for Critics" faster than he could 
have written it in prose. "Sir Launfal" was composed in 
two days, the "Commemoration Ode" in one. 

It was this facile, copious, enthusiastic poet, not yet 
thirty, who grew hot over the Mexican War and poured 
forth his indignation in an unforgettable political satire 
such as no English provincal poet could possibly have 
written. What a weapon he had, and how it flashed in 
his hand, gleaming with wit and humor and irony, edged 
with scorn, and weighted with two hundred years of 
Puritan tradition concerning right and wrong! For that. 



ioo BLISS PERRY 

after all, was the secret of its success. Great satire must 
have a standard; and Lowell revealed his in the very first 
number and in one line: 

" *T aint your eppylets an' feathers 
Make the thing a grain more right." 

Some readers to-day dislike the Yankee dialect of these 
verses. Some think Lowell struck too hard; but they 
forget Grant's characterization of the Mexican War 
as "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger 
against a weaker nation." There are critics who think 
the First Series of "Biglow Papers" too sectional; an ex- 
hibition of New England's ancient tendency towards 
nullification of the national will. No doubt Lowell 
underestimated the real strength of the advocates of 
national expansion at any cost. Parson Wilbur thought, 
you remember, that 

"All this big talk of our destinies 
Is half on it ign'ance an' t'other half rum." 

Neither ignorance nor rum was responsible for the in- 
vasion of Belgium; but at least one can say that the 
political philosophy which justifies forcible annexation of 
territory is taught to-day in fewer universities than were 
teaching it up to 19 14. Poets are apt to have the last 
word, even in politics. 

The war with Mexico was only an episode in the ex- 
pansion of the slave power; the fundamental test of 
American institutions came in the War for the Union. 
Here again Lowell touched the heart of the great issue. 
The Second Series of "Biglow Papers" is more uneven 
than the First. There is less humor and more of whimsi- 
cality. But the dialogue between "the Moniment and the 
Bridge," "Jonathan to John," and above all, the tenth 
number, "Mr. Hosea Biglow to the Editor of the Atlantic 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 101 

Monthly," show the full sweep of Lowell's power. Here 
are pride of country, passion of personal sorrow, tender- 
ness, idyllic beauty, magic of word and phrase. 

Never again, save in passages of the memorial odes 
written after the War, was Lowell more completely the 
poet. For it is well known that his was a divided nature, 
so variously endowed that complete integration was diffi- 
cult, and that the circumstances of his career prevented 
that steady concentration of powers which poetry de- 
mands. She is proverbially the most jealous of mis- 
tresses, and Lowell could not render a constant allegiance. 
At thirty his friends thought of him, rightly enough, as 
primarily a poet: but in the next fifteen years he had 
become a professor, had devoted long periods to study 
in Europe, had published prose essays, had turned editor, 
first of the Atlantic, then of the North American Review, 
and was writing political articles that guided public 
opinion in the North. To use a phrase then beginning 
to come into general use, he was now a "man of letters." 
But during the Civil War, I believe he thought of himself 
as simply a citizen of the Union. His general reputa- 
tion, won in many fields, gave weight to what he wrote 
as a publicist. His editorials were one more evidence 
of the central pull of the Great Tradition; it steadied his 
judgment, clarified his vision, kept his rudder true. 

Lowell's political papers during this period, although 
now little read, have been praised by Mr. James Ford 
Rhodes as an exact estimate of public sentiment, as voic- 
ing in energetic diction the mass of the common people 
of the North. Lincoln wrote to thank him for one of 
them, adding, "I fear I am not quite worthy of all which 
is therein kindly said of me personally." Luckily Lin- 
coln never saw an earlier letter in which Lowell thought 
that "an ounce of Fremont is worth a pound of long 
Abraham." The fact is that Lowell, like most men of 



102 BLISS PERRY 

the "Brahmin caste," came slowly to a recognition of 
Lincoln's true quality. Motley, watching events from 
Vienna, had a better perspective than Boston then 
afforded. Even Mr. Norton, Lowell's dear friend and 
associate upon the North American Review, thought in 
1862 that the President was timid, vacillating, and secre- 
tive, and, what now seems a queerer judgment still, that 
he wrote very poor English. But if the editors of the 
North American showed a typical Anglo-Saxon reluctance 
in yielding to the spell of a new political leadership, 
Lowell made full amends for it in that superb Lincoln 
strophe now inserted in the "Commemoration Ode," 
afterthought though it was, and not read at the celebra- 
tion. 

In this poem and in the various Centennial Odes 
composed ten years later, Lowell found an instrument 
exactly suited to his temperament and his technique. 
Loose in structure, copious in diction, swarming with 
imagery, these Odes gave ample scope for Lowell's swift 
gush of patriotic fervor, for the afflatus of the im- 
proviser, steadied by reverence for America's historic 
past. To a generation beginning to lose its taste for 
commemorative oratory, the Odes gave — and still give 
— the thrill of patriotic eloquence which Everett and 
Webster had communicated in the memorial epoch of 
1826. The forms change, the function never dies. 

The dozen years following the Civil War were also 
the period of Lowell's greatest productiveness in prose. 
Tethered as he was to the duties of his professorship, 
and growling humorously over them, he managed never- 
theless to put together volume after volume of essays that 
added greatly to his reputation, both here and in Eng- 
land. For it should be remembered that the honorary 
degrees of D. C. L. from Oxford and LL.D. from Cam- 
bridge were bestowed upon Lowell in 1873 an d ^74; 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 103 

long before any one had thought of him as Minister 
to England, and only a little more than ten years after 
he had printed his indignant lines about 

"The old J. B. 
A-crowdin' you and me." 

J. B. seemed to like them! A part of Lowell's full 
harvest of prose sprang from that habit of enormous 
reading which he had indulged since boyhood. He liked 
to think of himself as "one of the last of the great 
readers"; and though he was not that, of course, there 
was neverthless something of the seventeenth century 
tradition in his gluttony of books. The very sight and 
touch and smell of them were one of his pieties. He 
had written from Elmwood in 1861: "I am back again 
in the place I love best. I am sitting in my old garret, 
at my old desk, smoking my old pipe and loving my old 
friends." That is the way book-lovers still picture 
Lowell — the Lowell of the "Letters" — and though it 
is only a half-length portrait of him, it is not a false 
one. He drew upon his ripe stock of reading for his 
college lectures, and from the lectures, in turn, came 
many of the essays. Wide as the reading was in vari- 
ous languages, it was mainly in the field of "belles- 
lettres." Lowell had little or no interest in science or 
philosophy. Upon one side of his complex nature he was 
simply a book-man like Charles Lamb, and like Lamb 
he was tempted to think that books about subjects that 
did not interest him were not really books at all. 

Recent critics have seemed somewhat disturbed over 
Lowell's scholarship. He once said of Longfellow: "Mr. 
Longfellow is not a scholar in the German sense of the 
word — that is to say, he is no pedant, but he certainly 
is a scholar in another and perhaps a higher sense. I 
mean in range of acquirement and the flavor that comes 



104 BLISS PERRY 

with it." Those words might have been written of him- 
self. It is sixty-five years since Lowell was appointed 
to his professorship at Harvard, and during this long 
period erudition has not been idle here. It is quite 
possible that the University possesses to-day a better 
Dante scholar than Lowell, a better scholar in Old 
French, a better Chaucer scholar, a better Shakespeare 
scholar. But it is certain that if our Division of 
Modern Languages were called upon to produce a volume 
of essays matching in human interest one of Lowell's 
volumes drawn from these various fields, we should be 
obliged, first, to organize a syndicate, and, second, to 
accept defeat with as good grace as possible. 

Contemporary critics have also betrayed a certain 
concern for some aspects of LowelFs criticism. Is it 
always penetrating, they ask? Did he think his critical 
problems through? Did he have a body of doctrine, a 
general thesis to maintain? Did he always keep to the 
business in hand? Candor compels the admission that 
he often had no theses to maintain: he invented them as 
he went along. Sometimes he was a mere guesser, not 
a clairvoyant. We have had only one Coleridge. 
Lowell's essay on Wordsworth is not as illuminating as 
Walter Pater's. The essay on Gray is not as well 
ordered as Arnold's. The essay on Thoreau is quite as 
unsatisfactory as Stevenson's. It is true that the famous 
longer essays on Dante, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, 
Dryden, Milton, are full of irrelevant matter, of facile 
delightful talk which often leads nowhere in particular. 
It is true, finally, that a deeper interest in philosophy 
and science might have made Lowell's criticism more 
fruitful; that he blazed no new paths in critical method; 
that he overlooked many of the significant literary move- 
ments of his own time in his own country. 

But when one has said all this, even as brilliantly as 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 105 

Mr. Brownell has phrased it, one has failed to answer 
the pertinent question: "Why, in spite of these de- 
fects, were Lowell's essays read with such pleasure by 
so many intelligent persons on both sides of the Atlantic, 
and why are they read still?" The answer is to be 
found in the whole tradition of the English bookish essay, 
from the first appearance of Florio's translation of Mon- 
taigne down to the present hour. That tradition has 
always welcomed copious, well-informed, enthusiastic, 
disorderly, and affectionate talk about books. It de- 
mands gusto rather than strict method, discursiveness 
rather than concision, abundance of matter rather than 
mere neatness of design. "Here is God's plenty!" cried 
Dryden in his old age, as he opened once more his 
beloved Chaucer; and in Lowell's essays there is surely 
"God's plenty" for a book-lover. Every one praises 
"My Garden Acquaintance," "A Good Word for Winter," 
"On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners" as perfect 
types of the English familiar essay. But all of Lowell's 
essays are discursive and familiar. They are to be 
measured, not by the standards of modern French criti- 
cism — which is admittedly more deft, more delicate, 
more logical than ours — but by the unchartered free- 
dom which the English-speaking races have desired in 
their conversations about old authors for three hundred 
years. After all, 

"There are nine-and-sixty ways of constructing tribal lays 
And every single one of them is right." 

Lowell, like the rest of us, is to be tested by what he 
had, not by what he lacked. 

His reputation as a talker about books and men was 
greatly enhanced by the addresses delivered during his 
service as Minister to England. Henry James once de- 
scribed Lowell's career in London as a tribute to the 



io6 BLISS PERRY 

dominion of style. It was even more a triumph of 
character, but the style of these addresses is undeniable. 
Upon countless public occasions the American Minister 
was called upon to say the fitting word; and he deserves 
the quaint praise which Thomas Benton bestowed upon 
Chief Justice Marshall, as "a gentleman of finished 
breeding, of winning and prepossessing talk, and just 
as much mind as the occasion required him to show." 
I cannot think that Lowell spoke any better when un- 
veiling a bust in Westminster Abbey than he did at the 
Academy dinners in Ashfield, Massachusetts, where he 
had Mr. Curtis and Mr. Norton to set the pace; he was 
always adequate, always witty and wise; and some of 
the addresses in England, notably the one on "Democ- 
racy" given in Birmingham in 1884, ma Y fairly be 
called epoch-making in their good fortune of explaining 
America to Europe. Lowell had his annoyances like 
all ambassadors; there were dull dinners as well as 
pleasant ones, there were professional Irishmen to be 
placated, solemn despatches to be sent to Washington. 
Yet, like Mr. Phelps and Mr. Bayard and Mr. Choate 
and the lamented Walter Page in later years, this gentle- 
man, untrained in professional diplomacy, accomplished 
an enduring work. Without a trace of the conven- 
tional "hand across the sea" banality, without either 
subservience or jingoism, he helped teach the two na- 
tions mutual respect and confidence, and thirty years 
later, when England and America essayed a common task 
in safeguarding civilization, that old anchor held. 

This cumulative quality of LowelPs achievement is 
impressive, as one reviews his career. His most thought- 
ful, though not his most eloquent verse, his richest vein 
of letter-writing, his most influential addresses to the 
public, came toward the close of his life. Precocious 
as was his gift for expression, and versatile and bril- 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 107 

lant as had been his productiveness in the 1848 era, he 
was true to his Anglo-Saxon stock in being more effective 
at seventy than he had been at thirty. He was one 
of the men who die learning and who therefore are 
scarcely thought of as dying at all. I am not sure 
that we may not say of him to-day, as Thoreau said of 
John Brown, "He is more alive than ever he was." Cer- 
tainly the type of Americanism which Lowell repre- 
sented has grown steadily more interesting to the Euro- 
pean world, and has revealed itself increasingly as a 
factor to be reckoned with in the world of the 
future. Always responsive to his environment, always 
ready to advance, he faced the new political issues at 
the close of the century with the same courage and sagac- 
ity that had marked his conduct in the eighteen-forties. 
You remember his answer to Guizot's question: "How 
long do you think the American Republic will endure?" 
"So long," replied Lowell, "as the ideas of its founders 
continue to be dominant"; and he added that by "ideas" 
he meant "the traditions of their race in government and 
morals." Yet the conservatism revealed in this reply 
was blended with audacity — the inherited audacity of 
the pioneer. No line of Lowell's has been more often 
quoted in this hall than the line about the futility of 
attempting to open the "Future's portal with the Past's 
blood-rusted key." Those words were written in 1844. 
And here, in a sentence written forty-two years afterward, 
is a description of organized human society which voices 
the precise hope of forward-looking minds in Europe and 
America at this very hour: "The basis of all society is 
the putting of the force of all at the disposal of all, 
by means of some arrangement assented to by all, for 
the protection of all, and this under certain prescribed 
forms." Like Jefferson, like Lincoln, like Theodore 
Roosevelt at his noblest, Lowell dared to use the word 
"all." 



io8 



BLISS PERRY 



Such men are not forgotten. As long as June days 
come and the bobolink's song "runs down, a brook of 
laughter, through the air"; as long as a few scholars are 
content to sit in the old garret with the old books, and 
close the books, at times, to think of old friends; as long 
as the memory of brave boys makes the "eyes cloud up 
for rain"; as long as Americans still cry in their hearts 
"0 beautiful, my country!" the name of James Russell 
Lowell will be remembered as the inheritor and enricher 
of a great tradition. 



THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 1 
Carl Becker 

In 1 77 1, Thomas Hutchinson wrote to one of his 
friends, "We have not been so quiet here these five years 
. . . if it were not for two or three Adamses, we should 
do well enough." From that day to this many people 
have agreed with the fastidious governor. But so far, 
an Adams or two we have always had with us; and on 
the whole, although they have sometimes been exasperat- 
ing, they have always been salutary. During four 
generations the men of this family have loved and 
served America as much as they have scolded her. More 
cannot be said, except that they have commonly given, 
on both counts, more than they have received. Theirs 
is therefore the blessing, and ours the benefit. 

Among other things, we have to thank them for some 
diaries and autobiographies which have been notable 
for frank self-revelation. Henry Adams would of course 
have stoutly denied that any such impertinence as self- 
revelation was either intended or achieved in the Edu- 
cation. There is no evidence that he ever kept a diary 
(all things considered, the burden of proof is not on 
us! ) ; but it is not to be supposed that he would have 
published it in any case. A man who regarded himself 

1 The Education of Henry Adams: an Autobiography. Hough- 
ton Mifflin Co., 191 8. The selection is a part of an admirable 
critique in the April, 191 9, number of the American Historical 
Review. By permission of the author and of the editors of the 
magazine. The article should be read as a whole for a complete 
understanding of the critic's analysis. 

109 



no CARL BECKER 

as of no more significance than a chance deposit on the 
surface of the world might indeed write down an inti- 
mate record of his soul's doings as an exercise in cosmic 
irony; but the idea of publishing it could hardly have 
lived for a moment in the lambent flame of his own 
sardonic humor. He could be perverse, but perversity 
could not well go the length of perpetrating so pointless 
a joke as that would come to. 

No, Henry Adams would not reveal himself to the 
curious inspection of an unsympathetic world; but he 
would write a book for the purpose of exposing a dy- 
namic theory of history, than which nothing could well be 
more impersonal or unrevealing. With a philosophy of 
history the Puritan has always been preoccupied; and 
it was the major interest of Henry Adams throughout 
the better part of his life. He never gained more than 
a faint idea of any intelligible philosophy, as he would 
himself have readily admitted ; but after a lifetime of hard 
study and close thinking, the matter struck him thus: 

Between the dynamo in the gallery of machines and the engine- 
house outside, the break of continuity amounted to abysmal 
fracture for a historian's objects. No more relation could he 
discover between the steam and the electric current than between 
the Cross and the cathedral. The forces were interchangeable if 
not reversible, but he could see only an absolute fiat in elec- 
tricity as in faith. 

In these two forces the secret must lie, since for cen- 
turies faith had ruled inexorably, only to be replaced by 
electricity which promised to rule quite as inexorably. 
To find the secret was difficult enough; but 

any schoolboy could see that man as a force must be measured 
by motion, from a fixed point. Psychology helped here by sug- 
gesting a unit — the point of history when man held the highest 
idea of himself as a unit in a unified universe. Eight or ten years 
of study had led Adams to think he might use the century 



THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS in 

1 1 50-1 250, expressed in Amiens Cathedral and the Works of 
Thomas Aquinas, as the unit from which he might measure 
motion down to his own time, without assuming anything as 
true or untrue except relation. . . . Setting himself to the task, 
he began a volume which he mentally knew as "Mont-Saint- 
Michel and Chartres: a Study in Thirteenth-Century Unity." 
From that point he proposed to fix a position for himself, which 
he could label: "The Education of Henry Adams: a Study in 
Twentieth- Century Multiplicity." With the help of these two 
points of relation, he hoped to project his lines forward and back- 
ward indefinitely, subject to correction from anyone who should 
know better. Thereupon, he sailed for home. 

You are to understand, therefore, that the Education 
of Henry Adams has nothing to do really with the person 
Henry Adams. Since the time of Rousseau, 

the Ego has steadily tended to efface itself, and, for purposes of 
model, to become a manikin, on which the toilet of education is to 
be draped in order to show the fit or misfit of the clothes. The 
object of study is the garment, not the figure. . . . The mani- 
kin, therefore, has the same value as any other geometrical figure 
of three or four dimensions, which is used for the study of 
relation. For that purpose it cannot be spared; it is the only 
measure of motion, of proportion, of human condition; it must 
have the air of reality; it must be taken for real; it must be 
treated as though it had life. Who knows? Perhaps it had. 

Whether it had life or not is, however, of no importance. 
The manikin is to be treated impersonally; and will be 
indicated throughout in the third person, not as the au- 
thor's ego, but as a kind of projected and animated geo- 
metrical point upon which cosmic lines of force impinge! 
It turns out that the manikin had life after all — a 
good deal of it; with the effect that as you go on you 
become more concerned with the manikin than with the 
clothes, and at last find yourself wholly absorbed with 
an ego more subtle and complex, at times more exasperat- 
ing, yet upon the whole more engaging, and above all 
more pervasive, than you are likely to come upon in 



ii2 CARL BECKER 

any autobiography of modern times. It is really wonder- 
ful how the clothes fall away from the manikin, how 
with the best effort at draping they in fact refuse to be 
put on at all. The reason is simple; for the constant 
refrain of the study is that no clothes were ever found. 
The manikin is therefore always in evidence for lack 
of covering, and ends by having to apologize for its very 
existence. "To the tired student, the idea that he must 
give it up [the search for philosophy-clothes] seemed 
sheer senility. As long as he could whisper, he would go 
on as he had begun, bluntly refusing to meet his creator 
with the admission that the creation had taught him noth- 
ing except that the square of the hypothenuse of a right- 
angled triangle might for convenience be taken as equal 
to something else." On his own premises, the assump- 
tion that the manikin would ever meet his creator (if 
he indeed had one), or that his creator would be con- 
cerned with his opinion of the creation, is gratuitous. 
On his own premises, there is something too much of the 
ego here. The Education of Henry Adams, conceived as 
a study in the philosophy of history, turns out in fact 
to be an Apologia pro vita sua, one of the most self- 
centered and self-revealing books in the language. 

The revelation is not indeed of the direct sort that 
springs from frank and insouciant spontaneity. Since 
the revelation was not intended, the process is tor- 
tuous in the extreme. It is a revelation that comes 
by the way, made manifest in the effort to conceal it, 
overlaid by all sorts of cryptic sentences and self-dep- 
recatory phrases, half hidden by the protective coloring 
taken on by a sensitive mind commonly employing para- 
dox and delighting in perverse and teasing mystification. 
One can never be sure what the book means; but taken 
at its face value the Education seems to be the story 
of a man who regarded life from the outside, as a spec- 



THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 113 

tator at the play, a play in which his own part as 
spectator was taken by a minor character. The play 
was amusing in its absurdity, but it touched not the 
spectator, Henry Adams, who was content to sit in his 
protected stall and laugh in his sleeve at the play and 
the players — and most of all at himself for laughing. 
Such is the implication; but I think it was not so. In 
the Mont-Saint-Michel 1 Adams speaks of those young 
people who rarely like the Romanesque. "They prefer 
the Gothic. . . . No doubt, they are right, since they 
are young: but men and women who have lived long 
and are tired — who want rest — who have done with 
aspirations and ambitions — whose life has been a broken 
arch — feel this repose and self-restraint as they feel 
nothing else." The Education is in fact the record, 
tragic and pathetic underneath its genial irony, of the 
defeat of fine aspirations and laudable ambitions. It is 
the story of a life which the man himself, in his old age, 
looked back upon as a broken arch. 

One is not surprised that a man of Henry Adams's 
antecedents should take life seriously; but no sane man, 
looking upon his career from the outside, would call it 
a failure. Born into a family whose traditions were in 
themselves a liberal education, Henry Adams enjoyed 
advantages in youth such as few boys have. It was at 
least an unusual experience to be able, as a lad, to sit 
every Sunday "behind a President grandfather, and to 
read over his head the tablet in memory of a President 
great-grandfather, who had 'pledged his life, his fortune, 
and his sacred honor' to secure the independence of his 
country." This to be sure might not have been an 
advantage if it led the lad to regard the presidency 
as a heritable office in the family; but it was certainly 
a great deal to be able to listen daily, at his father's 

1 Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, p. 7. [Author's note.] 



ii4 CARL BECKER 

table, to talk as good as he was "ever likely to hear 
again." This was doubtless one of the reasons why he 
got (or was it only that it seemed so to him in his 
old age?) so little from Harvard College; but at any 
rate he graduated with honors, and afterwards enjoyed 
the blessed boon of two care-free years of idling and 
study in Germany and Italy. For six years, as private 
secretary to his father on one of the most difficult and 
successful diplomatic missions in the history of his 
country, he watched history in the making, and gained 
an inside knowledge of English politics and society such 
as comes to one young man in ten thousand. Returning 
to America, he served for a time as editor of the North 
American, and was for seven years a professor of history 
in Harvard College. During the last thirty-five years 
of his life, he lived alternately in Washington and 
Paris. Relieved of official or other responsibility, he 
travelled all over the world, met the most interesting 
people of his generation, devoted himself at leisure to 
the study of art and literature, philosophy and science, 
and wrote, as an incident in a long life of serious en- 
deavor, twelve or fifteen volumes of history which by 
common consent rank with the best work done in that 
field by American scholars. 

By no common standard does such a record measure 
failure. Most men would have been satisfied with the 
life he lived apart from the books he wrote, or with 
the books he wrote apart from the life he lived. Henry 
Adams is commonly counted with the historians; but 
he scarcely thought of himself as one, except in so 
far as he sought and failed to find a philosophy of history. 
It is characteristic that in the Education he barely men- 
tions the History of the United States. The enterprise, 
which he undertook for lack of something better, he 
always regarded as negligible — an episode in his life 



THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 115 

to be chronicled like any other. But it is safe to say 
that most of us who call ourselves historians, with far 
less justification, would be well content if we could 
count, as the result of a lifetime of effort, such a shelf- 
ful of volumes to our credit. The average professor of 
history might well expect, on less showing, to be chosen 
president of the Historical Association; in which case 
the prospect of having to deliver a presidential address 
might lead him to speculate idly in idle moments upon 
the meaning of history ; but the riddle of existence would 
not greatly trouble his sleep, nor could it be said of him, 
as Henry Adams said of himself, that "a historical 
formula that should satisfy the conditions of the stellar 
universe weighed heavily upon his mind." He would 
live out the remnant of his days, an admired and a feted 
leader in the scholar's world, wholly unaware that his 
life had been a cosmic failure. 



It is not likely that many readers will see the tragedy 
of a failure that looks like success, or miss the phil- 
osophy-clothes that were never found. And indeed we 
may all be well content with the doings of this manikin 
that turns out to be so lively an ego. Henry Adams was 
worth a wilderness of philosophies. Perhaps we should 
have liked the book better if he could have taken himself 
more frankly, as a matter of course, for what he was — 
a man of wide experience, of altogether uncommon at- 
tainments, of extraordinarily incisive mental power; and 
if, resting on this assumption, he had told us more 
directly, as something we should like to know, what he 
had done, what people he had met and known, what 
events he had shared in or observed, and what he thought 
about it all. This he does do of course, in his own 
enigmatic way, in the process of explaining where and 



n6 CARL BECKER 

how he sought education and failed to find it; and 
fortunately, in the course of the leisurely journey, he 
takes us into many by-paths and shows us, by the easy 
play of his illuminating intelligence, much strange 
country, and many people whom we have never known, 
or have never known so intimately. When this happens, 
when the manikin forgets itself and its education-clothes, 
and merely describes people or types of mind or social 
customs, the result is wholly admirable. There are 
inimitable passages, and the number is large, which one 
cannot forget. One will not soon forget the young 
men of the Harvard class of '58, who were "negative 
to a degree that in the end became positive and trium- 
phant" ; or the exquisitely drawn portrait of "Madame 
President," all things considered the finest passage in 
the book; or the picture of old John Quincy Adams 
coming slowly down-stairs one hot summer morning and 
with massive and silent solemnity leading the rebellious 
little Henry to school against his will; or yet the re- 
flections of the little Henry himself (or was it the reflec- 
tion of an older Henry?), who recognized on this 
occasion "that the President, though a tool of tyranny, 
had done his disreputable work with a certain intelligence. 
He had shown no temper, no irritation, no personal feel- 
ing, and had made no display of force. Above all, he 
had held his tongue." . . . 

The number of passages one would wish to quote is 
legion; but one must be content to say that the book 
is fascinating throughout — particularly perhaps in those 
parts which are not concerned with the education of 
Henry Adams. Where this recondite and cosmic problem 
is touched upon, there are often qualifications to be 
made. The perpetual profession of ignorance and in- 
capacity seems at times a bit disingenuous; and we 
have to do for the most part, not with the way things 



THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS 117 

struck Adams at the time, but with the way it seemed 
to him, as an old man looking back upon the " broken 
arch," they should have struck him. Besides, in the 
later chapters, in which he deals with the dynamic theory 
of history, the problem was so vague, even to himself, 
that we too often do not know what he wishes to convey. 
Apropos of the Chicago Fair, which like everything 
else in his later years linked itself to the business of 
the dynamo and the Virgin, he says: "Did he himself 
quite know what he meant? Certainly not! If he had 
known enough to state his problem, his education would 
have been completed at once." Is this the statement 
of a fact, or only the reflection of a perversity? We do 
not know. Most readers, at all events, having reached 
page 343, will not be inclined to dispute the assertion. 
Yet we must after all be grateful for this meaningless 
philosophy of history (the more so perhaps since it is 
meaningless) ; for without it we should never have had 
either the Mont-Saint-Michel or The Education of Henry 
Adams — "books which no gentleman's library" need 
contain, but which will long be read by the curious in- 
quirer into the nature of the human heart. 

Henry Adams lies buried in Rock Creek Cemetery, in 
Washington. The casual visitor might perhaps notice, 
on a slight elevation, a group of shrubs and small trees 
making a circular enclosure. If he should step up into 
this concealed spot, he would see on the opposite side a 
polished marble seat; and placing himself there he 
would find himself facing a seated figure, done in bronze, 
loosely wrapped in a mantle which, covering the body 
and the head, throws into strong relief a face of singular 
fascination. Whether man or woman, it would puzzle 
the observer to say. The eyes are half closed, in reverie 
rather than in sleep. The figure seems not to convey the 
sense either of life or death, of joy or sorrow, of hope 



n8 CARL BECKER 

or despair. It has lived, but life is done; it has ex- 
perienced all things, but is now oblivious of all; it has 
questioned, but questions no more. The casual visitor 
will perhaps approach the figure, looking for a symbol, 
a name, a date — some revelation. There is none. The 
level ground, carpeted with dead leaves, gives no indi- 
cation of a grave beneath. It may be that the puzzled 
visitor will step outside, walk around the enclosure, 
examine the marble shaft against which the figure is 
placed; and, finding nothing there, return to the seat 
and look long at the strange face. What does he make 
of it — this level spot, these shrubs, this figure that 
speaks and yet is silent? Nothing — or what he will. 
Such was life to Henry Adams, who lived long, and ques- 
tioned seriously, and would not be content with the 
dishonest or the facile answer. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR AN EDUCATION 1 
Booker T. Washington 

One day, while at work in the coal-mine, I happened 
to overhear two miners talking about a great school for 
coloured people somewhere in Virginia. This was the 
first time that I had ever heard anything about any kind 
of school or college that was more pretentious than the 
little coloured school in our town. 

In the darkness of the mine I noiselessly crept as 
close as I could to the two men who were talking. I 
heard one tell the other that not only was the school 
established for the members of my race, but that oppor- 
tunities were provided by which poor but worthy students 
could work out all or a part of the cost of board, and 
at the same time be taught some trade or industry. 

As they went on describing the school, it seemed 
to me that it must be the greatest place on earth, and 
not even Heaven presented more attractions for me at 
that time than did the Hampton Normal and Agricul- 
tural Institute in Virginia, about which these men were 
talking. I resolved at once to go to that school, although 
I had no idea where it was, or how many miles away, or 
how I was going to reach it; I remembered only that I 
was on fire constantly with one ambition, and that was 
to go to Hampton. This thought was with me day and 
night. 

After hearing of the Hampton Institute, I continued 

^From Up from Slavery, by Booker T. Washington. Copy- 
right, 1900, 1901, by Doubleday, Page & Co. By permission. 

119 



120 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 

to work for a few months longer in the coal-mine. While 
at work there, I heard of a vacant position in the house- 
hold of General Lewis Ruffner, the owner of the salt- 
furnace and coal-mine. Mrs. Viola Ruffner, the wife 
of General Ruffner, was a "Yankee" woman from Ver- 
mont. Mrs. Ruffner had a reputation all through the 
vicinity for being very strict with her servants, and 
especially with the boys who tried to serve her. Few 
of them had remained with her more than two or three 
weeks. They all left with the same excuse: she was too 
strict. I decided, however, that I would rather try Mrs. 
Ruffner's house than remain in the coal-mine, and so my 
mother applied to her for the vacant position. I was 
hired at a salary of $5 per month. 

I had heard so much about Mrs. Ruffner's severity that 
I was almost afraid to see her, and trembled when I 
went into her presence. I had not lived with her many 
weeks, however, before I began to understand her. I 
soon began to learn that, first of all, she wanted every- 
thing kept clean about her, that she wanted things done 
promptly and systematically, and at the bottom of every- 
thing she wanted absolute honesty and frankness. 
Nothing must be sloven or slipshod; every door, every 
fence, must be kept in repair. 

I cannot now recall how long I lived with Mrs. Ruff- 
ner before going to Hampton, but I think it must have 
been a year and a half. At any rate, I here repeat 
what I have said more than once before, that the lessons 
that I learned in the home of Mrs. Ruffner were as 
valuable to me as any education I have ever gotten 
anywhere since. Even to this day I never see bits of 
paper scattered around a house or in the street that I 
do not want to pick them up at once. I never see a 
filthy yard that I do not want to clean it, a paling off 
of a fence that I do not want to put it on, an unpainted 



THE STRUGGLE FOR AN EDUCATION 121 

or unwhitewashed house that I do not want to paint 
or whitewash it, or a button off one's clothes, or a 
grease-spot on them or on a floor, that I do not want 
to call attention to it. 

From fearing Mrs. Ruffner I soon learned to look 
upon her as one of my best friends. When she found 
that she could trust me she did so implicitly. During 
the one or two winters that I was with her she gave me 
an opportunity to go to school for an hour in the day 
during a portion of the winter months, but most of my 
studying was done at night, sometimes alone, sometimes 
under someone whom I could hire to teach me. Mrs. 
Ruffner always encouraged and sympathized with me in 
all my efforts to get an education. It was while living 
with her that I began to get together my first library. 
I secured a dry-goods box, knocked out one side of it, 
put some shelves in it, and began putting into it every 
kind of book that I could get my hands upon, and called 
it my "library." 

Notwithstanding my success at Mrs. Ruffner's I 
did not give up the idea of going to the Hampton Insti- 
tute. In the fall of 1872 I determined to make an effort 
to get there, although, as I have stated, I had no definite 
idea of the direction in which Hampton was, or of 
what it would cost to go there. I do not think that any 
one thoroughly sympathized with me in my ambition to 
go to Hampton unless it was my mother, and she was 
troubled with a grave fear that I was starting out on a 
"wild-goose chase." At any rate, I got only a half- 
hearted consent from her that I might start. The small 
amount of money that I had earned had been consumed 
by my stepfather and the remainder of the family, with 
the exception of a very few dollars, and so I had very 
little with which to buy clothes and pay my travelling 
expenses. My brother John helped me all that he could, 



122 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 

but of course that was not a great deal, for his work was 
in the coal-mine, where he did not earn much, and 
most of what he did earn went in the direction of paying 
the household expenses. 

Perhaps the thing that touched and pleased me most 
in connection with my starting for Hampton was the 
interest that many of the older coloured people took in 
the matter. They had spent the best days of their lives 
in slavery, and hardly expected to live to see the time 
when they would see a member of their race leave home 
to attend a boarding-school. Some of these older people 
would give me a nickel, others a quarter, or a handker- 
chief. 

Finally the great day came, and I started for Hamp- 
ton. I had only a small, cheap satchel that contained 
what few articles of clothing I could get. My mother 
at the time was rather weak and broken in health. I 
hardly expected to see her again, and thus our parting 
was all the more sad. She, however, was very brave 
through it all. At that time there were no through 
trains connecting that part of West Virginia with eastern 
Virginia. Trains ran only a portion of the way, and 
the remainder of the distance was travelled by stage- 
coaches. 

The distance from Maiden to Hampton is about five 
hundred miles. I had not been away from home many 
hours before it began to grow painfully evident that I 
did not have enough money to pay my fare to Hampton. 
One experience I shall long remember. I had been 
travelling over the mountains most of the afternoon in 
an old-fashioned stage-coach, when, late in the evening, 
the coach stopped for the night at a common, unpainted 
house called a hotel. All the other passengers except 
myself were whites. In my ignorance I supposed that 
the little hotel existed for the purpose of accommodating 



THE STRUGGLE FOR AN EDUCATION 123 

the passengers who travelled on the stage-coach. The 
difference that the colour of one's skin would make I had 
not thought anything about. After all the other pas- 
sengers had been shown rooms and were getting ready 
for supper, I shyly presented myself before the man at 
the desk. It is true I had practically no money in my 
pocket with which to pay for bed or food, but I had 
hoped in some way to beg my way into the good graces 
of the landlord, for at that season in the mountains of 
Virginia the weather was cold, and I wanted to get in- 
doors for the night. Without asking as to whether I 
had any money, the man at the desk firmly refused to 
even consider the matter of providing me with food or 
lodging. This was my first experience in finding out 
what the colour of my skin meant. In some way I 
managed to keep warm by walking about, and so got 
through the night. My whole soul was so bent upon 
reaching Hampton that I did not have time to cherish 
any bitterness toward the hotel-keeper. 

By walking, begging rides both in wagons and in the 
cars, in some way, after a number of days, I reached the 
city of Richmond, Virginia, about eighty-two miles from 
Hampton. When I reached there, tired, hungry, and 
dirty, it was late in the night. I had never been in a 
large city, and this rather added to my misery. When 
I reached Richmond, I was completely out of money. 
I had not a single acquaintance in the place, and, be- 
ing unused to city ways, I did not know where to go. I 
applied at several places for lodging, but they all wanted 
money, and that was what I did not have. Knowing 
nothing else better to do, I walked the streets. In doing 
this I passed by many food-stands where fried chicken 
and half-moon apple pies were piled high and made 
to present a most tempting appearance. At that time 
it seemed to me that I would have promised all that I 



124 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 

expected to possess in the future to have gotten hold 
of one of those chicken legs or one of those pies. But 
I could not get either of these, nor anything else to eat. 

I must have walked the streets till after midnight. At 
last I became so exhausted that I could walk no longer. 
I was tired, I was hungry, I was everything but dis- 
couraged. Just about the time when I reached extreme 
physical exhaustion, I came upon a portion of a street 
where the board sidewalk was considerably elevated. 
I waited for a few minutes, till I was sure that no 
passers-by could see me, and then crept under the side- 
walk and lay for the night upon the ground, with my 
satchel of clothing for a pillow. Nearly all night I 
could hear the tramp of feet over my head. The next 
morning I found myself somewhat refreshed, but I was 
extremely hungry, because it had been a long time since 
I had had sufficient food. As soon as it became light 
enough for me to see my surroundings I noticed that I 
was near a large ship, and that this ship seemed to be 
unloading a cargo of pigiron. I went at once to the 
vessel and asked the captain to permit me to help un- 
load the vessel in order to get money for food. The 
captain, a white man, who seemed to be kind-hearted, 
consented. I worked long enough to earn money for 
my breakfast, and it seems to me, as I remember it now, 
to have been about the best breakfast that I have ever 
eaten. 

My work pleased the captain so well that he told me 
if I desired I could continue working for a small amount 
per day. This I was very glad to do. I continued work- 
ing on this vessel for a number of days. After buying 
food with the small wages I received there was not much 
left to add to the amount I must get to pay my way 
to Hampton. In order to economize in every way pos- 
sible, so as to be sure to reach Hampton in a reason- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR AN EDUCATION 125 

able time, I continued to sleep under the same sidewalk 
that gave me shelter the first night I was in Richmond. 
Many years after that the coloured citizens of Richmond 
very kindly tendered me a reception at which there must 
have been two thousand people present. This recep- 
tion was held not far from the spot where I slept the 
first night I spent in that city, and I must confess that 
my mind was more upon the sidewalk that first gave 
me shelter than upon the reception, agreeable and cor- 
dial as it was. 

When I had saved what I considered enough money 
with which to reach Hampton, I thanked the captain of 
the vessel for his kindness, and started again. Without 
any unusual occurrence I reached Hampton, with a 
surplus of exactly fifty cents with which to begin my 
education. To me it had been a long, eventful journey; 
but the first sight of the large, three-story, brick school 
building seemed to have rewarded me for all that I had 
undergone in order to reach the place. If the people 
who gave the money to provide that building could appre- 
ciate the influence the sight of it had upon me, as well 
as upon thousands of other youths, they would feel all 
the more encouraged to make such gifts. It seemed to 
me to be the largest and most beautiful building I had 
ever seen. The sight of it seemed to give me new life. 
I felt that a new kind of existence had now begun — 
that life would now have a new meaning. I felt that 
I had reached the promised land, and I resolved to let 
no obstacle prevent me from putting forth the highest 
effort to fit myself to accomplish the most good in the 
world. 

As soon as possible after reaching the grounds of the 
Hampton Institute, I presented myself before the head 
teacher for assignment to a class. Having been so long 
without proper food, a bath, and change of clothing, I 



126 



BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 



did not, of course, make a very favourable impression 
upon her, and I could see at once that there were doubts 
in her mind about the wisdom of admitting me as a 
student. I felt that I could hardly blame her if she 
got the idea that I was a worthless loafer or tramp. 
For some time she did not refuse to admit me, neither 
did she decide in my favour, and I continued to linger 
about her, and to impress her in all the ways I could 
with my worthiness. In the meantime I saw her ad- 
mitting other students, and that added greatly to my dis- 
comfort, for I felt, deep down in my heart, that I could 
do as well as they, if I could only get a chance to show 
what was in me. 

After some hours had passed, the head teacher said 
to me: "The adjoining recitation-room needs sweeping. 
Take the broom and sweep it." 

It occurred to me at once that here was my chance. 
Never did I receive an order with more delight. I knew 
that I could sweep, for Mrs. Ruffner had thoroughly 
taught me how to do that when I lived with her. 

I swept the recitation-room three times. Then I got 
a dusting-cloth and I dusted it four times. All the wood- 
work around the walls, every bench, table, and desk, 
I went over four times with my dusting-cloth. Besides, 
every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet 
and corner in the room had been thoroughly cleaned. 
I had the feeling that in a large measure my future 
depended upon the impression I made upon the teacher 
in the cleaning of that room. When I was through, I 
reported to the head teacher. She was a "Yankee" 
woman who knew just where to look for dirt. She went 
into the room and inspected the floor and closets; then 
she took her handkerchief and rubbed it on the wood- 
work about the walls, and over the table and benches. 
When she was unable to find one bit of dirt on the floor, 



THE STRUGGLE FOR AN EDUCATION 127 

or a particle of dust on any of the furniture, she quietly 
remarked, "I guess you will do to enter this institution." 
I was one of the happiest souls on earth. The sweep- 
ing of that room was my college examination, and never 
did any youth pass an examination for entrance into 
Harvard or Yale that gave him more genuine satisfac- 
tion. I have passed several examinations since then, 
but I have always felt that this was the best one I 
ever passed. 



ENTERING JOURNALISM x 
Jacob A. Rus 

When at last I got well enough to travel, I set my face 
toward the east, and journeyed on foot through the north- 
ern coal regions of Pennsylvania by slow stages, caring 
little whither I went, and earning just enough by peddling 
flat-irons to pay my way. It was spring when I started; 
the autumn tints were on the leaves when I brought up 
in New York at last, as nearly restored as youth and 
the long tramp had power to do. But the restless energy 
that had made of me a successful salesman was gone. 
I thought only, if I thought at all, of finding some quiet 
place where I could sit and see the world go by that 
concerned me no longer. With a dim idea of being 
sent into the farthest wilds as an operator, I went to 
a business college on Fourth Avenue and paid $20 to 
learn telegraphing. It was the last money I had. I 
attended the school in the afternoon. In the morning 
I peddled flat-irons, earning money for my board, and 
so made out. 

One day, while I was so occupied, I saw among the 
"want" advertisements in a newspaper one offering the 
position of city editor on a Long Island City weekly to 
a competent man. Something of my old ambition stirred 
within me. It did not occur to me that city editors 

1 From The Making of an American, by Jacob A. Riis. Copy- 
right, iqoi, by The Outlook Co. Copyright, 1901, by The 
Macmillan Co. By permission of Mrs. Jacob A. Riis and of the 
publishers. 

128 



ENTERING JOURNALISM 129 

were not usually obtained by advertising, still less that 
I was not competent, having only the vaguest notions 
of what the functions of a city editor might be. I 
applied for the job, and got it at once. Eight dollars 
a week was to be my salary; my job, to fill the local 
column and attend to the affairs of Hunter's Point and 
Blissville generally, politics excluded. The editor at- 
tended to that. In twenty- four hours I was hard at 
work writing up my then most ill-favored bailiwick. It 
it none too fine yet, but in those days, when every 
nuisance crowded out of New York found refuge there, 
it stunk to heaven. 

Certainly I had entered journalism by the back door, 
very far back at that, when I joined the staff of the 
Review. Signs of that appeared speedily, and multi- 
plied day by day. On the third day of my employment 
I beheld the editor-in-chief being thrashed down the 
street by an irate coachman whom he had offended, and 
when, in a spirit of loyalty, I would have cast in my 
lot with him, I was held back by one of the printers 
with the laughing comment that that was his daily 
diet and that it was good for him. That was the only way 
any one ever got any satisfaction or anything else out of 
him. Judging from the goings on about the office in 
the two weeks I was there, he must have been ex- 
tensively in debt to all sorts of people who were trying 
to collect. When, on my second deferred pay-day, I 
met him on the stairs, propelled by his washerwoman^ 
who brought her basket down on his head with every 
step he took, calling upon the populace (the stairs were 
outside the building) to witness just punishment meted 
out to him for failing to pay for the washing of his 
shirts, I rightly concluded that the city editor's claim 
stood no show. I left him owing me two weeks' pay, 
but I freely forgive him. I think I got my money's 



130 JACOB A. RIIS 

worth of experience. I did not let grass grow under 

my feet as "city editor.'' Hunter's Point had received 
for once a thorough raking over, and I my first lesson 
in hunting the elusive item and, when found, making 
a note of it. 

Except for a Newfoundland pup which some one had 
given me. I went back over the river as poor as I had 
come. The dog proved rather a doubtful possession as 
the days went by. Its appetite was tremendous, and 
its preference for my society embarrassingly unrestrained. 
It would not be content to sleep anywhere else than 
in my room. If I put it out in the yard, it forthwith 
organized a search for me in which the entire neighbor- 
hood was compelled to take part, willy-nilly. Its man- 
ner of doing it boomed the local trade in hair-brushes 
and mantel bric-a-brac, but brought on complications 
with the landlord in the morning that usually resulted 
in the departure of Bob and myself for other pastures. 
Part with him I could not: for Bob loved me. Once 
I tried, when it seemed that there was no choice. I had 
been put out for perhaps the tenth time, and I had no 
more money left to provide for our keep. A Wall Street 
broker had advertised for a watch-dog. and I went with 
Bob to see him. But when he would have counted the 
three gold pieces he offered into my hand. I saw Bob's 
honest brown eyes watching me with a look of such 
faithful affection that I dropped the coins as if they 
burned, and caught him about the neck to tell him that 
we would never part. Bob put his huge paws on my 
shoulders, licked my face, and barked such a joyous 
bark of challenge to the world in general that even the 
Wall Street man was touched. 

*T guess you are too good friends to part." he said. 
And so we were. 

We left Wall Street and its gold behind to go out and 



ENTERING JOURNALISM 131 

starve together. Literally we did that in the days that 
followed. I had taken to peddling books, an illustrated 
Dickens issued by the Harpers, but I barely earned 
enough by it to keep life in us and a transient roof over 
our heads. I call it transient because it was rarely the 
same two nights together, for causes which I have ex- 
plained. In the day Bob made out rather better than I. 
He could always coax a supper out of the servant at 
the basement gate by his curvetings and tricks, while I 
pleaded vainly and hungrily with the mistress at the 
front door. Dickens was a drug in the market. A 
curious fatality had given me a copy of "Hard Times" 
to canvass with. I think no amount of good fortune 
could turn my head while it stands in my bookcase. 
One look at it brings back too vividly that day when 
Bob and I had gone, desperate and breakfastless, from 
the last bed we might know for many days, to try to sell 
it and so get the means to keep us for another twenty- 
four hours. 

It was not only breakfast we lacked. The day before 
we had had only a crust together. Two days without 
food is not good preparation for a day's canvassing. 
We did the best we could. Bob stood by and wagged 
his tail persuasively while I did the talking; but luck 
was dead against us, and "Hard Times" stuck to us for 
all we tried. Evening came and found us down by the 
Cooper Institute, with never a cent. Faint with hunger, 
I sat down on the steps under the illuminated clock, 
while Bob stretched himself at my feet. He had be- 
guiled the cook in one of the last houses we called at, 
and his stomach was filled. From the corner I had 
looked on enviously. For me there was no supper, as there 
had been no dinner and no breakfast. To-morrow there 
was another day of starvation. How long was this to 
last? Was it any use to keep up a struggle so hopeless? 



i 3 2 JACOB A. RIIS 

From this very spot I had gone, hungry and wrathful, 
three years before when the dining Frenchmen for 
whom I wanted to fight thrust me forth from their 
company. Three wasted years! Then I had one cent 
in my pocket, I remembered. To-day I had not even 
so much. I was bankrupt in hope and purpose. Noth- 
ing had gone right; nothing would ever go right; 
and, worse, I did not care. I drummed moodily upon 
my book. Wasted! Yes, that was right. My life was 
wasted, utterly wasted. 

A voice hailed me by name, and Bob sat up looking 
attentively at me for his cue as to the treatment of 
the owner of it. I recognized in him the principal of 
the telegraph school where I had gone until my money 
gave out. He seemed suddenly struck by something. 

"Why, what are you doing here?" he asked. I told 
him Bob and I were just resting after a day of can- 
vassing. 

"Books!" he snorted. "I guess they won't make you 
rich. Now, how would you like to be a reporter, if you 
have got nothing better to do? The manager of a news 
agency down town asked me to-day to find him a bright 
young fellow whom he could break in. It isn't much — 
$10 a week to start with. But it is better than peddling 
books, I know." 

He poked over the book in my hand and read the 
title. "Hard Times," he said, with a little laugh, "I 
guess so. WTiat do you say? I think you will do. 
Better come along and let me give you a note to 
him now." 

As in a dream, I walked across the street with him 
to his office and got the letter which was to make me, 
half-starved and homeless, rich as Croesus, it seemed to 
me. Bob went along, and before I departed from the 
school a better home than I could give him was found 






ENTERING JOURNALISM 133 

for him with my benefactor. I was to bring him the 
next day. I had to admit that it was best so. 
That night, the last which Bob and I spent together, 
we walked up and down Broadway, where there was 
quiet, thinking it over. What had happened had 
stirred me profoundly. For the second time I saw a 
hand held out to save me from wreck just when it 
seemed inevitable; and I knew it for His hand, to 
whose will I was at last beginning to bow in humility 
that had been a stranger to me before. It had ever 
been my own will, my own way, upon which I insisted. 
In the shadow of Grace Church I bowed my head against 
the granite wall of the gray tower and prayed for 
strength to do the work which I had so long and ardu- 
ously sought and which had now come to me; the while 
Bob sat and looked on, saying clearly enough with his 
wagging tail that he did not know what was going on, 
but that he was sure it was all right. Then we re- 
sumed our wanderings. One thought, and only one, I 
had room for. I did not pursue it; it walked with me 
wherever I went: She was not married yet. Not yet. 
When the sun rose, I washed my face and hands in a 
dog's drinking-trough, pulled my clothes into such shape 
as I could, and went with Bob to his new home. That 
parting over, I walked down to 23 Park Row and de- 
livered my letter to the desk editor in the New York 
News Association, up on the top floor. 

He looked me over a little doubtfully, but evidently 
impressed with the early hours I kept, told me that I 
might try. He waved me to a desk, bidding me wait 
until he had made out his morning book of assignments; 
and with such scant ceremony was I finally introduced 
to Newspaper Row, that had been to me like an en- 
chanted land. After twenty-seven years of hard work 
in it, during which I have been behind the scenes of 



i 34 JACOB A. RIIS 

most of the plays that go to make up the sum of the 
life of the metropolis, it exercises the old spell over me 
yet. If my sympathies need quickening, my point of 
view adjusting, I have only to go down to Park Row 
at eventide, when the crowds are hurrying homeward 
and the City Hall clock is lighted, particularly when 
the snow lies on the grass in the park, and stand 
watching them awhile, to find all things coming right. 
It is Bob who stands by and watches with me then, as on 
that night. 

The assignment that fell to my lot when the book was 
made out, the first against which my name was written 
in a New York editor's books, was a lunch of some sort 
at the Astor House. I have forgotten what was the 
special occasion. I remember the bearskin hats of the 
Old Guard in it, but little else. In a kind of haze, I 
beheld half the savory viands of earth spread under the 
eyes and nostrils of a man who had not tasted food 
for the third day. I did not ask for any. I had reached 
that stage of starvation that is like the still centre of a 
cyclone, when no hunger is felt. But it may be that 
a touch of it all crept into my report; for when the edi- 
tor had read it, he said briefly: — 

"You will do. Take that desk, and report at ten 
every morning, sharp." 

That night, when I was dismissed from the office, I 
went up the Bowery to No. 185, where a Danish family 
kept a boarding-house up under the roof. I had work 
and wages now, and could pay. On the stairs I fell in 
a swoon and lay there till some one stumbled over me 
in the dark and carried me in. My strength had at last 
given out. 

So began my life as a newspaper man. 



BOUND COASTWISE 1 
Ralph D. Paine 

One thinks of the old merchant marine in terms of 
the clipper ship and distant ports. The coasting trade 
has been overlooked in song and story; yet, since the 
year 1859, its fleets have always been larger and more 
important than the American deep-water commerce nor 
have decay and misfortune overtaken them. It is a 
traffic which flourished from the beginning, ingeniously 
adapting itself to new conditions, unchecked by war, and 
surviving with splendid vigor, under steam and sail, 
in this modern era. 

The seafaring pioneers won their way from port to 
port of the tempestuous Atlantic coast in tiny ketches, 
sloops, and shallops when the voyage of five hundred 
miles from New England to Virginia was a prolonged 
and hazardous adventure. Fog and shoals and lee shores 
beset these coastwise sailors, and shipwrecks were piti- 
fully frequent. In no Hall of Fame will you find the 
name of Captain Andrew Robinson of Gloucester, but he 
was nevertheless an illustrious benefactor and deserves 
a place among the most useful Americans. His inven- 
tion was the Yankee schooner of fore-and-aft rig, and he 
gave to this type of vessel its name. 2 Seaworthy, fast, 

1 From The Old Merchant Marine, by Ralph D. Paine, in The 
Chronicles of America Series. Copyright, iqiq, by the Yale Uni- 
versity Press. By permission of the author and of the publishers. 

2 It is said that as the odd two-master slid gracefully into the 
water, a spectator exclaimed: "See how she scoons!" "Aye," 
answered Captain Robinson, "a schooner let her be!" This 
launching took place in 1713 or 1714. [Author's note.] 

135 



136 RALPH D. PAINE 

and easily handled, adapted for use in the early eight- 
eenth century when inland transportation was almost 
impossible, the schooner carried on trade between the 
colonies and was an important factor in the growth of 
the fisheries. 

Before the Revolution the first New England schoon- 
ers were beating up to the Grand Bank of Newfoundland 
after cod and halibut. They were of no more than 
fifty tons' burden, too small for their task but manned 
by fishermen of surpassing hardihood. Marblehead was 
then the foremost fishing port with two hundred brigs 
and schooners on the offshore banks. But to Gloucester 
belongs the glory of sending the first schooner to the 
Grand Bank. From these two rock-bound harbors went 
thousands of trained seamen to man the privateers and 
the ships of the Continental navy, slinging their ham- 
mocks on the gun-decks beside the whalemen of Nan- 
tucket. These fishermen and coastwise sailors fought 
on the land as well and followed the drums of Washing- 
ton's armies until the final scene at Yorktown. Glou- 
cester and Marblehead were filled with widows and 
orphans, and half their men-folk were dead or missing. 

The fishing-trade soon prospered again, and the men 
of the old ports tenaciously clung to the sea even when 
the great migration flowed westward to people the wilder- 
ness and found a new American empire. They were 
fishermen from father to son, bound together in an 
intimate community of interests, a race of pure native 
or English stock, deserving this tribute which was paid 
to them in Congress: "Every person on board our fish- 
ing vessels has an interest in common with his associates; 
their reward depends upon their industry and enter- 
prise. Much caution is observed in the selection of the 
crews of our fishing vessels; it often happens that every 
individual is connected by blood and the strongest ties 



BOUND COASTWISE 137 

of friendship; our fishermen are remarkable for their 
sobriety and good conduct, and they rank with the most 
skillful navigators." 

Fishing and the coastwise merchant trade were closely 
linked. Schooners loaded dried cod as well as lumber 
for southern ports and carried back naval stores and 
other southern products. Well-to-do fishermen owned 
trading vessels and sent out their ventures, the sailors 
shifting from one forecastle to the other. With a taste 
for an easier life than the stormy, freezing Banks, the 
young Gloucester-man would sign on for a voyage to 
Pernambuco or Havana and so be fired with ambition to 
become a mate or master and take to deep water after 
a while. In this way was maintained a school of sea- 
manship which furnished the most intelligent and effi- 
cient officers of the merchant marine. For generations 
they were mostly recruited from the old fishing and 
shipping ports of New England until the term "Yankee 
shipmaster" had a meaning peculiarly its own. 

Seafaring has undergone so many revolutionary 
changes and old days and ways are so nearly obliterated 
that it is singular to find the sailing vessel still em- 
ployed in great numbers, even though the gasolene 
motor is being installed to kick her along in spells of 
calm weather. The Gloucester fishing schooner, per- 
fect of her type, stanch, fleet, and powerful, still drives 
homeward from the Banks under a tall press of canvas, 
and her crew still divide the earnings, share and share, 
as did their forefathers a hundred and fifty years ago. 
But the old New England strain of blood no longer pre- 
dominates, and Portuguese, Scandinavians, and Nova 
Scotia " Blue-noses" bunk with the lads of Gloucester 
stock. Yet they are alike for courage, hardihood, and 
mastery of the sea, and the traditions of the calling are 
undimmed. 



138 RALPH D. PAINE 

There was a time before the Civil War when Con- 
gress jealously protected the fisheries by means of a 
bounty system and legislation aimed against our Cana- 
dian neighbors. The fishing fleets were regarded as a 
source of national wealth and the nursery of prime 
seamen for the navy and merchant marine. In 1858 
the bounty system was abandoned, however, and the fisher- 
men were left to shift for themselves, earning small profits 
at peril of their lives and preferring to follow the sea 
because they knew no other profession. In spite of 
this loss of assistance from the Government, the ton- 
nage engaged in deep-sea fisheries was never so great 
as in the second year of the Civil War. Four years 
later the industry had shrunk one-half; and it has never 
recovered its early importance. 1 

The coastwise merchant trade, on the other hand, has 
been jealously guarded against competition and other- 
wise fostered ever since 1789, when the first discrimina- 
tory tonnage tax was enforced. The Embargo Act of 
1808 prohibited domestic commerce to foreign flags, and 
this edict was renewed in the American Navigation Act 
of 181 7. It remained a firmly established doctrine of 
maritime policy until the Great War compelled its sus- 
pension as an emergency measure. The theories of pro- 
tection and free trade have been bitterly debated for 
generations, but in this instance the practice was emi- 
nently successful and the results were vastly impressive. 
Deep-water shipping dwindled and died, but the increase 
in coastwise sailing was consistent. It rose to five mil- 
lion tons early in this century and makes the United 
States still one of the foremost maritime powers in re- 
spect to salt-water activity. 

To speak of this deep-water shipping as trade coast- 

1 In 1862, the tonnage amounted to 193459; m 1866, to 
89,386. [Author's note.] 



BOUND COASTWISE 139 

wise is misleading, in a way. The words convey an 
impression of dodging from port to port for short dis- 
tances, whereas many of the voyages are longer than 
those of the foreign routes in European waters. It is 
farther by sea from Boston to Philadelphia than from 
Plymouth, England, to Bordeaux. A schooner making 
the run from Portland to Savannah lays more knots over 
her stern than a tramp bound out from England to 
Lisbon. It is a shorter voyage from Cardiff to Algiers 
than an American skipper pricks off on his chart when 
he takes his steamer from New York to New Orleans or 
Galveston. This coastwise trade may lack the romance 
of the old school of the square-rigged ship in the Roaring 
Forties, but it has always been the more perilous and 
exacting. Its seamen suffer hardships unknown else- 
where, for they have to endure winters of intense cold 
and heavy gales and they are always in risk of stranding 
or being driven ashore. 

The story of these hardy men is interwoven, for the 
most part, with the development of the schooner in size 
and power. This graceful craft, so peculiar to its own 
coast and people, was built for utility and possessed a 
simple beauty of its own when under full sail. The 
schooners were at first very small because it was believed 
that large fore-and-aft sails could not be handled with 
safety. They were difficult to reef or lower in a blow 
until it was discovered that three masts instead of two 
made the task much easier. For many years the three- 
masted schooner was the most popular kind of American 
merchant vessel. They clustered in every Atlantic port 
and were built in the yards of New England, New York, 
New Jersey, and Virginia — built by the mile, as the 
saying was, and sawed off in lengths to suit the owners' 
pleasure. They carried the coal, ice, lumber of the 
whole sea-board and were so economical of man-power 



140 RALPH D. PAINE 

that they earned dividends where steamers or square- 
rigged ships would not have paid for themselves. 

As soon as a small steam-engine was employed to hoist 
the sails, it became possible to launch much larger 
schooners and to operate them at a marvelously low 
cost. Rapidly the four-master gained favor, and then 
came the five- and six-masted vessels, gigantic ships of 
their kind. Instead of the hundred-ton schooner of a 
century ago, Hampton Roads and Boston Harbor saw 
these great cargo carriers which could stow under hatches 
four and five thousand tons of coal, and whose masts 
soared a hundred and fifty feet above the deck. Square- 
rigged ships of the same capacity would have required 
crews of a hundred men, but these schooners were com- 
fortably handled by a company of fifteen all told, only 
ten of whom were in the forecastle. There was no need 
of sweating and hauling at braces and halliards. The 
steam- winch undertook all this toil. The tremendous 
sails, stretching a hundred feet from boom to gaff could 
not have been managed otherwise. Even for trimming 
sheets or setting topsails, it was necessary merely to take 
a turn or two around the drum of the winch engine and 
turn the steam valve. The big schooner was the last 
word in cheap, efficient transportation by water. In 
her own sphere of activity she was as notable an achieve- 
ment as the Western Ocean packet or the Cape Horn 
clipper. 

The masters who sailed these extraordinary vessels 
also changed and had to learn a new kind of seaman- 
ship. They must be very competent men, for the tests 
of their skill and readiness were really greater than those 
demanded of the deep-water skipper. They drove these 
great schooners alongshore winter and summer, across 
Nantucket Shoals and around Cape Cod, and their sal- 
vation depended on shortening sail ahead of the gale. 



BOUND COASTWISE 141 

Let the wind once blow and the sea get up, and it was 
almost impossible to strip the canvas off an unwieldy 
six-master. The captain's chief fear was of being blown 
offshore, of having his vessel run away with him! Un- 
like the deep-water man, he preferred running in 
toward the beach and letting go his anchors. There he 
would ride out the storm and hoist sail when the weather 
moderated. 

These were American shipmasters of the old breed, 
raised in schooners as a rule, and adapting themselves 
to modern conditions. They sailed for nominal wages 
and primage, or five per cent of the gross freight paid 
the vessel. Before the Great War in Europe, freights 
were low and the schooner skippers earned scanty in- 
comes. Then came a world shortage of tonnage and 
immediately coastwise freights soared skyward. The 
big schooners of the Palmer fleet began to reap fabulous 
dividends and their masters shared in the unexpected 
opulence. Besides their primage they owned shares in 
their vessels, a thirty-second or so, and presently their 
settlement at the end of a voyage coastwise amounted 
to an income of a thousand dollars a month. They 
earned this money, and the managing owners cheerfully 
paid them, for there had been lean years and uncomplain- 
ing service and the sailor had proved himself worthy of 
his hire. So tempting was the foreign war trade> that 
a fleet of them was sent across the Atlantic until the 
American Government barred them from the war zone as 
too easy a prey for submarine attack. They therefore 
returned to the old coastwise route or loaded for South 
American ports — singularly interesting ships because 
they were the last bold venture of the old American 
maritime spirit, a challenge to the Age of Steam. 

No more of these huge, towering schooners have been 
built in the last dozen years. Steam colliers and barges 



142 RALPH D. PAINE 

have won the fight because time is now more valuable 
than cheapness of transportation. The schooner might 
bowl down to Norfolk from Boston or Portland in four 
days and be threshing about for two weeks in head winds 
on the return voyage. 

The small schooner appeared to be doomed somewhat 
earlier. She had ceased to be profitable in competition 
with the larger, more modern fore-and-after, but these 
battered, veteran craft died hard. They harked back 
to a simpler age, to the era of the stage-coach and the 
spinning-wheel, to the little shipyards that were to be 
found on every bay and inlet of New England. They 
were still owned and sailed by men who ashore were 
friends and neighbors. Even now you may find during 
your summer wanderings some stumpy, weather-worn 
two-master running on for shelter overnight, which has 
plied up and down the coast for fifty or sixty years, now 
leaking like a basket and too frail for winter voyages. 
It was in a craft very much like this that your rude 
ancestors went privateering against the British. Indeed, 
the little schooner Polly, which fought briskly in the 
War of 1 812, is still afloat and loading cargoes in New 
England ports. 

These little coasters, surviving long after the stately 
merchant marine had vanished from blue water, have 
enjoyed a slant of favoring fortune in recent years. 
They, too, have been in demand, and once again there 
is money to spare for paint and cordage and calking. 
They have been granted a new lease of life and may be 
found moored at the wharfs, beached on the marine 
railways, or anchored in the stream, eagerly awaiting 
their turn to refit. It is a matter of vital concern that 
the freight on spruce boards from Bangor to New York 
has increased to five dollars a thousand feet. Many of 
these craft belong to grandfatherly skippers who dared 



BOUND COASTWISE 143 

not venture past Cape Cod in December, lest the vener- 
able Matilda Emerson or the valetudinarian Joshua R. 
Coggswell should open up and founder in a blow. 
During the winter storms these skippers used to hug the 
kitchen stove in bleak farmhouses until spring came 
and they could put to sea again. The rigor of circum- 
stances, however, forced others to seek for trade the 
whole year through. In a recent winter fifty-seven 
schooners were lost on the New England coast, most 
of which were unfit for anything but summer breezes. 
As by a miracle, others have been able to renew their 
youth, to replace spongy planking and rotten stems, and 
to deck themselves out in white canvas and fresh paint! 

The captains of these craft foregather in the ship- 
chandler's shops, where the floor is strewn with sawdust, 
the armchairs are capacious, and the environment har- 
monizes with the tales that are told. It is an informal 
club of coastwise skippers and the old energy begins 
to show itself once more. They move with a brisker 
gait than when times were so hard and they went begging 
for charters at any terms. A sinewy patriarch stumps 
to a window, flourishes his arm at an ancient two-master, 
and booms out: 

"That vessel of mine is as sound as a nut, I tell ye. 
She ain't as big as some, but I'd like nothin' better than 
the sun clouded over. Expect to navigate to Africy 
same as the Horace M. Bickford that cleared t'other day, 
stocked for sixty thousand dollars" 

"Huh, you'd get lost out 0' sight of land, John," is 
the cruel retort, "and that old shoe-box of yours 'ud be 
scared to death without a harbor to run into every time 
the sun clouded over. Exject to navigate to Africy 
with an alarm-clock and a soundin'-lead, I presume." 

"Mebbe I'd better let well enough alone," replies the 
old man. "Africy don't seem as neighborly as Phipps- 



i 4 4 RALPH D. PAINE 

burg and Machiasport. I'll chance it as far as Phila- 
delphy next voyage and I guess the old woman can buy 
a new dress." 

The activity and the reawakening of the old ship- 
yards, their slips all filled with the frames of wooden 
vessels for the foreign trade, is like a revival of the 
old merchant marine, a reincarnation of ghostly mem- 
ories. In mellowed dignity the square white houses 
beneath the New England elms recall to mind the 
mariners who dwell therein. It seems as if their 
shipyards also belonged to the past; but the summer 
visitor finds a fresh attraction in watching the new 
schooners rise from the stocks, and the gay pageant of 
launching them, every mast ablaze with bunting, draws 
crowds to the water-front. And as a business venture, 
with somewhat of the tang of old-fashioned romance, 
the casual stranger is now and then tempted to pur- 
chase a sixty-fourth "piece" of a splendid Yankee four- 
master and keep in touch with its roving fortunes. The 
shipping reports of the daily newspaper prove more 
fascinating than the ticker tape, and the tidings of a 
successful voyage thrill one with a sense of personal 
gratification. For the sea has not lost its magic and 
its mystery, and those who go down to it in ships must 
still battle against elemental odds — still carry on the 
noble and enduring traditions of the Old Merchant 
Marine. 



THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE 
AUTOMOBILE x 

Burton J. Hendrick 

In many manufacturing lines, American genius for 
organization and large scale production has developed 
mammoth industries. In nearly all the tendency to 
combination and concentration has exercised a pre- 
dominating influence. In the early years of the twen- 
tieth century the public realized, for the first time, that 
one corporation, the American Sugar Refining Company, 
controlled ninety-eight per cent of the business of re- 
fining sugar. Six large interests — Armour, Swift, Mor- 
ris, the National Packing Company, Cudahy, and 
Schwarzschild and Sulzberger — had so concentrated the 
packing business that, by 1905, they slaughtered prac- 
tically all the cattle shipped to Western centers and 
furnished most of the beef consumed in the large cities 
east of Pittsburgh. The "Tobacco Trust" had largely 
monopolized both the wholesale and retail trade in this 
article of luxury and had also made extensive inroads 
into the English market. The textile industry had not 
only transformed great centers of New England into an 
American Lancashire, but the Southern States, recovering 
from the demoralization of the Civil War, had begun to 
spin their own cotton and to send the finished product 

1 From The Age of Big Business, by Burton J. Hendrick, in 
The Chronicles of America Series. Copyright, iqiq, by the Yale 
University Press. By permission of the author and of the 
publishers. 

145 



146 BURTON J. HENDRICK 

to all parts of the world. American shoe manufacturers 
had developed their art to a point where "American 
shoes" had acquired a distinctive standing in practically 
every European country. 

It is hardly necessary to describe in detail each of 
these industries. In their broad outlines they merely 
repeat the story of steel, of oil, of agricultural machinery; 
they are the product of the same methods, the same 
initiative. There is one branch of American manu- 
facture, however, that merits more detailed attention. 
If we scan the manufacturing statistics of 19 17, one 
amazing fact stares us in the face. There are only three 
American industries whose product has attained the bil- 
lion mark; one of these is steel, the other food products, 
while the third is an industry that was practically un- 
known in the United States fifteen years ago. Super- 
latives come naturally to mind in discussing American 
progress, but hardly any extravagant phrases could do 
justice to the development of American automobiles. 
In 1902 the United States produced 3700 motor vehicles; 
in 19 1 6 we made 1,500,000. The man who now makes 
a personal profit of not far from $50,000,000 a year in 
this industry was a puttering mechanic when the twenti- 
eth century came in. If we capitalized Henry Ford's 
income, he is probably a richer man than Rockefeller; 
yet, as recently as 1905 his possessions consisted of a 
little shed of a factory which employed a dozen workmen. 
Dazzling as is this personal success, its really important 
aspects are the things for which it stands. The Ameri- 
can automobile has had its wild-cat days; for the larger 
part, however, its leaders have paid little attention to 
Wall Street, but have limited their activities exclusively 
to manufacturing. Moreover, the automobile illustrates 
more completely than any other industry the technical 
qualities that so largely explain our industrial progress. 



DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE AUTOMOBILE 147 

Above all, American manufacturing has developed three 
characteristics. These are quantity production, stand- 
ardization, and the use of labor-saving machinery. It 
is because Ford and other manufacturers adapted these 
principles to making the automobile that the American 
motor industry has reached such gigantic proportions. 

A few years ago an English manufacturer, seeking the 
explanation of America's ability to produce an excellent 
car so cheaply, made an interesting experiment. He 
obtained three American automobiles, all of the same 
"standardized" make, and gave them a long and racking 
tour over English highways. Workmen then took apart 
the three cars and threw the disjointed remains into a 
promiscuous heap. Every bolt, bar, gas tank, motor, 
wheel, and tire was taken from its accustomed place and 
piled up, a hideous mass of rubbish. Workmen then 
painstakingly put together three cars from these dis- 
ordered elements. Three chauffeurs jumped on these 
cars, and they immediately started down the road and 
made a long journey just as acceptably as before. The 
Englishman had learned the secret of American success 
with automobiles. The one word "standardization" ex- 
plained the mystery. 

Yet when, a few years before, the English referred 
to the American automobile as a "glorified perambu- 
lator," the characterization was not unjust. This new 
method of transportation was slow in finding favor on 
our side of the Atlantic. America was sentimentally and 
practically devoted to the horse as the motive power for 
vehicles; and the fact that we had so few good roads 
also worked against the introduction of the automobile. 
Yet here, as in Europe, the mechanically propelled 
wagon made its appearance in early times. This vehicle, 
like the bicycle, is not essentially a modern invention; 
the reason any one can manufacture it is that practically 



148 BURTON J. HENDRICK 

all the basic ideas antedate 1840. Indeed, the auto- 
mobile is really older than the railroad. In the twenties 
and thirties, steam stage coaches made regular trips 
between certain cities in England and occasionally a 
much resounding power-driven carriage would come 
careering through New York and Philadelphia, scaring 
all the horses and precipitating the intervention of the 
authorities. The hardy spirits who devised these en- 
gines, all of whose names are recorded in the encyclo- 
pedias, deservedly rank as the "fathers" of the auto- 
mobile. The responsibility as the actual "inventor" can 
probably be no more definitely placed. However, had 
it not been for two developments, neither of them imme- 
diately related to the motor car, we should never have 
had this efficient method of transportation. The real 
"fathers" of the automobile are Gottlieb Daimler, the 
German who made the first successful gasoline engine, 
and Charles Goodyear, the American who discovered the 
secret of vulcanized rubber. Without this engine to form 
the motive power and the pneumatic tire to give it four 
air cushions to run on, the automobile would never 
have progressed beyond the steam carriage stage. It 
is true that Charles Baldwin Selden, of Rochester, has 
been pictured as the "inventor of the modern auto- 
mobile" because, as long ago as 1879, he applied for a 
patent on the idea of using a gasoline engine as motive 
power, securing this basic patent in 1895, but this, it 
must be admitted, forms a flimsy basis for such a pre- 
tentious claim. 

The French apparently led all nations in the manu- 
facture of motor vehicles, and in the early nineties their 
products began to make occasional appearances on 
American roads. The type of American who owned this 
imported machine was the same that owned steam yachts 
and a box at the opera. Hardly any new development 



DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE AUTOMOBILE 149 

has aroused greater hostility. It not only frightened 
horses, and so disturbed the popular traffic of the time, 
but its speed, its glamour, its arrogance, and the haughty 
behavior of its proprietor, had apparently transformed 
it into a new badge of social cleavage. It thus imme- 
diately took its place as a new gewgaw of the rich; 
that it had any other purpose to serve had occurred to 
few people. Yet the French and English machines 
created an entirely different reaction in the mind of an 
imaginative mechanic in Detroit. Probably American 
annals contain no finer story than that of this simple 
American workman. Yet from the beginning it seemed 
inevitable that Henry Ford should play this appointed 
part in the world. Born in Michigan in 1863, the son 
of an English farmer who had emigrated to Michigan 
and a Dutch mother, Ford had always demonstrated an 
interest in things far removed from his farm. Only 
mechanical devices interested him. He liked getting 
in the crops, because McCormick harvesters did most 
of the work; it was only the machinery of the dairy 
that held him enthralled. He developed destructive ten- 
dencies as a boy; he had to take everything to pieces. 
He horrified a rich playmate by resolving his new watch 
into its component parts — and promptly quieted him 
by putting it together again. "Every clock in the house 
shuddered when it saw me coming," he recently said. 
He constructed a small working forge in his school-yard, 
and built a small steam engine that could make ten 
miles an hour. He spent his winter evenings reading 
mechanical and scientific journals; he cared little for 
general literature, but machinery in any form was almost 
a pathological obsession. Some boys run away from the 
farm to join the circus or to go to sea; Henry Ford at 
the age of sixteen ran away to get a job in a machine 
shop. Here one anomaly immediately impressed him. 



ISO BURTON J. HENDRICK 

No two machines were made exactly alike; each was 
regarded as a separate job. With his savings from his 
weekly wage of $2.50, young Ford purchased a three 
dollar watch, and immediately dissected it. If several 
thousand of these watches could be made, each one 
exactly alike, they would cost only thirty-seven cents 
apiece. "Then/' said Ford to himself, "everybody could 
have one." He had fairly elaborated his plans to start 
a factory on this basis when his father's illness called 
him back to the farm. 

This was about 1880. Ford's next conspicuous ap- 
pearance in Detroit was about 1892. This appearance 
was not only conspicuous; it was exceedingly noisy. 
Detroit now knew him as the pilot of a queer affair that 
whirled and lurched through her thoroughfares, making 
as much disturbance as a freight train. In reading his 
technical journals Ford had met many descriptions of 
horseless carriages; the consequence was that he had 
again broken away from the farm, taken a job at $45 
a month in a Detroit machine shop, and devoted his 
evenings to the production of a gasoline engine. His 
young wife was exceedingly concerned about his health; 
the neighbors' snap judgment was that he was insane. 
Only two other Americans, Charles B. Duryea and Ell- 
wood Haynes, were attempting to construct an auto- 
mobile at that time. Long before Ford was ready with 
his machine, others had begun to appear. Duryea 
turned out his first one in 1892; and foreign makes 
began to appear in considerable numbers. But the 
Detroit mechanic had a more comprehensive inspiration. 
He was not working to make one of the finely upholstered 
and beautifully painted vehicles that came from overseas. 
"Anything that isn't good for everybody is no good at 
all," he said. Precisely as it was Vail's ambition to 
make every American a user of the telephone and 



DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE AUTOMOBILE 151 

McCormick's to make every farmer a user of his har- 
vester, so it was Ford's determination that every family 
should have an automobile. He was apparently the only 
man in those times who saw that this new machine was 
not primarily a luxury but a convenience. Yet all manu- 
facturers, here and in Europe, laughed at his idea. Why 
not give every poor man a Fifth Avenue house? French- 
men and Englishmen scouted the idea that any one 
could make a cheap automobile. Its machinery was 
particularly refined and called for the highest grade of 
steel; the clever Americans might use their labor-saving 
devices on many products, but only skillful hand work 
could turn out a motor car. European manufacturers 
regarded each car as a separate problem; they individual- 
ized its manufacture almost as scrupulously as a painter 
paints his portrait or a poet writes his poem. The re- 
sult was that only a man with several thousand dollars 
could purchase one. But Henry Ford — and afterward 
other American makers — had quite a different concep- 
tion. 

Henry Ford's earliest banker was the proprietor of a 
quick-lunch wagon at which the inventor used to eat 
his midnight meal after his hard evening's work in the 
shed. "Coffee Jim," to whom Ford confided his hopes 
and aspirations on these occasions, was the only man 
with available cash who had any faith in his ideas. Capi- 
tal in more substantial form, however, came in about 
1902. With money advanced by "Coffee Jim," Ford had 
built a machine which he entered in the Grosse Point 
races that year. It was a hideous-looking affair, but 
it ran like the wind and outdistanced all competitors. 
From that day Ford's career has been an uninterrupted 
triumph. But he rejected the earliest offers of capital 
because the millionaires would not agree to his terms. 
They were looking for high prices and quick profits, while 



i S 2 BURTON J. HENDRICK 

Ford's plans were for low prices, large sales, and use of 
profits to extend the business and reduce the cost of his 
machine. Henry Ford's greatness as a manufacturer 
consists in the tenacity with which he has clung to this 
conception. Contrary to general belief in the automobile 
industry he maintained that a high sale price was not 
necessary for large profits; indeed he declared that the 
lower the price, the larger the net earnings would be. 
Nor did he believe that low wages meant prosperity. 
The most efficient labor, no matter what the nominal 
cost might be, was the most economical. The secret 
of success was the rapid production of a serviceable 
article in large quantities. When Ford first talked of 
turning out 10,000 automobiles a year, his associates 
asked him where he was going to sell them. Ford's 
answer was that that was no problem at all ; the machines 
would sell themselves. He called attention to the fact 
that there were millions of people in this country whose 
incomes exceeded $1800 a year; all in that class would 
become prospective purchasers of a low-priced automo- 
bile. There were 6,000,000 farmers; what more re- 
ceptive market could one ask? His only problem was 
the technical one — how to produce his machine in 
sufficient quantities. 

The bicycle business in this country had passed 
through a similar experience. When first placed on 
the market bicycles were expensive; it took $100 or 
$150 to buy one. In a few years, however, an excellent 
machine was selling for $25 or $30. What explained 
this drop in price? The answer is that the manufac- 
turers learned to standardize their product. Bicycle 
factories became not so much places where the articles 
were manufactured as assembling rooms for putting them 
together. The several parts were made in different places, 
each establishment specializing in a particular part; 






DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE AUTOMOBILE 153 

they were then shipped to centers where they were trans- 
formed into completed machines. The result was that 
the United States, despite the high wages paid here, 
led the world in bicycle making and flooded all coun- 
tries with this utilitarian article. Our great locomotive 
factories had developed on similar lines. Europeans had 
always marveled that Americans could build these costly 
articles so cheaply that they could undersell European 
makers. When they obtained a glimpse of an Ameri- 
can locomotive factory, the reason became plain. In 
Europe each locomotive was a separate problem; no two, 
even in the same shop, were exactly alike. But here 
locomotives are built in parts, all duplicates of one 
another; the parts are then sent by machinery to 
assembling rooms and rapidly put together. American 
harvesting machines are built in the same way; when- 
ever a farmer loses a part, he can go to the country store 
and buy its duplicate, for the parts of the same machine 
do not vary to the thousandth of an inch. The same 
principle applies to hundreds of other articles. 

Thus Henry Ford did not invent standardization; he 
merely applied this great American idea to a product 
to which, because of the delicate labor required, it seemed 
at first unadapted. He soon found that it was cheaper 
to ship the parts of ten cars to a central point than to 
ship ten completed cars. There would therefore be large 
savings in making his parts in particular factories and 
shipping them to assembling establishments. In this 
way the completed cars would always be near their 
markets. Large production would mean that he could 
purchase his raw materials at very low prices; high 
wages meant that he could get the efficient labor which 
was demanded by his rapid fire method of campaign. 
It was necessary to plan the making of every part to 
the minutest detail, to have each part machined to its 



1 54 BURTON J. HENDRICK 

exact size, and to have every screw, bolt, and bar pre- 
cisely interchangeable. About the year 1907 the Ford 
factory was systematized on this basis. In that twelve- 
month it produced 10,000 machines, each one the 
absolute counterpart of the other 9,999. American 
manufacturers until then had been content with a few 
hundred a year! From that date the Ford production 
has rapidly increased; until, in 19 16, there were nearly 
4,000,000 automobiles in the United States — more than 
in all the rest of the world put together — of which 
one-sixth were the output of the Ford factories. Many 
other American manufacturers followed the Ford plan, 
with the result that American automobiles are duplicat- 
ing the story of American bicycles; because of their 
cheapness and serviceability, they are rapidly dominating 
the markets of the world. In the Great War American 
machines have surpassed all in the work done under 
particularly exacting circumstances. 

A glimpse of a Ford assembling room — and we can 
see the same process in other American factories — 
makes clear the reasons for this success. In these rooms 
no fitting is done; the fragments of automobiles come 
in automatically and are simply bolted together. First 
of all the units are assembled in their several depart- 
ments. The rear axles, the front axles, the frames, the 
radiators, and the motors are all put together with the 
same precision and exactness that marks the operation 
of the completed car. Thus the wheels come from one 
part of the factory and are rolled on an inclined plane 
to a particular spot. The tires are propelled by some 
mysterious force to the same spot; as the two elements 
coincide, workmen quickly put them together. In a 
long room the bodies are slowly advanced on moving 
platforms at the rate of about a foot per minute. At 
the side stand groups of men, each prepared to do his 



DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE AUTOMOBILE 155 

bit, their materials being delivered at convenient points 
by chutes. As the tops pass by these men quickly bolt 
them into place, and the completed body is sent to a 
place where it awaits the chassis. This important section, 
comprising all the machinery, starts at one end of a 
moving platform as a front and rear axle bolted together 
with the frame. As this slowly advances, it passes under 
a bridge containing a gasoline tank, which is quickly 
adjusted. Farther on the motor is swung over by a 
small hoist and lowered into position on the frame. 
Presently the dash slides down and is placed in position 
behind the motor. As the rapidly accumulating mechan- 
ism passes on, different workmen adjust the mufflers, 
exhaust pipes, the radiator, and the wheels which, as 
already indicated, arrive on the scene completely tired. 
Then a workman seats himself on the gasoline tank, 
which contains a small quantity of its indispensable fuel, 
starts the engine, and the thing moves out the door 
under its own power. It stops for a moment outside; 
the completed body drops down from the second floor, 
and a few bolts quickly put it securely in place. The 
workman drives the now finished Ford to a loading plat- 
form, it is stored away in a box car, and is started on 
its way to market. At the present time about 2000 cars 
are daily turned out in this fashion. The nation de- 
mands them at a more rapid rate than they can be made. 
Herein we have what is probably America's greatest 
manufacturing exploit. And this democratization of 
the automobile comprises more than the acme of effi- 
ciency in the manufacturing art. The career of Henry 
Ford has a symbolic significance as well. It may be 
taken as signalizing the new ideals that have gained the 
upper hand in American industry. We began this 
review of American business with Cornelius Vanderbilt 
as the typical figure. It is a happy augury that it closes 



156 BURTON J. HENDRICK 

with Henry Ford in the foreground. Vanderbilt, valu- 
able as were many of his achievements, represented that 
spirit of egotism that was rampant for the larger part 
of the fifty years following the war. He was always 
seeking his own advantage, and he never regarded the 
public interest as anything worth a moment's considera- 
tion. With Ford, however, the spirit of service has 
been the predominating motive. His earnings have been 
immeasurably greater than Vanderbilt's; his income for 
two years amounts to nearly Vanderbilt's total fortune 
at his death; but the piling up of riches has been by no 
means his exclusive purpose. He has recognized that his 
workmen are his partners and has liberally shared with 
them his increasing profits. His money is not the prod- 
uct of speculation; Ford is a stranger to Wall Street and 
has built his business independently of the great banking 
interest. He has enjoyed no monopoly, as have the 
Rockefellers; there are more than three hundred makers 
of automobiles in the United States alone. He has 
spurned all solicitations to join combinations. Far from 
asking tariff favors he has entered European markets 
and undersold English, French, and German makers on 
their own ground. Instead of taking advantage of a 
great public demand to increase his prices, Ford has 
continuously lowered them. Though his idealism may 
have led him into an occasional personal absurdity, as 
a business man he may be taken as the full flower of 
American manufacturing genius. Possibly America, as 
a consequence of universal war, is advancing to a higher 
state of industrial organization; but an economic system 
is not entirely evil that produces such an industry as that 
which has made the automobile the servant of millions of 
Americans. 



TRAVELING AFOOT 1 

John Finley 

"Traveling afoot" — the very words start the imagi- 
nation out upon the road! One's nomad ancestors cry- 
within one across centuries and invite to the open spaces. 
Many to whom this cry comes are impelled to seek the 
mountain paths, the forest trails, the solitudes or wilder- 
nesses coursed only by the feet of wild animals. But to 
me the black or dun roads, the people's highways, are 
the more appealing — those strips or ribbons of land 
which is still held in common, the paths wide enough 
for the carriages of the rich and the carts of the poor 
to pass each other, the roads over which they all bear 
their creaking burdens or run on errands of mercy or 
need, but preferably roads that do not also invite the 
flying automobiles, whose occupants so often make the 
pedestrian feel that even these strips have ceased to be 
democratic. 

My traveling afoot, for many years, has been chiefly 
in busy city streets or in the country roads into which 
they run — not far from the day's work or from the 
thoroughfares of the world's concerns. 

Of such journeys on foot which I recall with greatest 
pleasure are some that I have made in the encircling 
of cities. More than once I have walked around Man- 
hattan Island (an afternoon's or a day's adventure 

1 Reprinted, by permission of the author and of the publishers, 
from The Outlook, April 25, 1917. Copyright, 191 7, by The 
Outlook Co. 

157 



i S 8 JOHN FINLEY 

within the reach of thousands), keeping as close as 
possible to the water's edge all the way round. One 
not only passes through physical conditions illustrating 
the various stages of municipal development from the 
wild forest at one end of the island to the most thickly 
populated spots of the earth at the other, but one also 
passes through diverse cities and civilizations. Another 
journey of this sort was one that I made around Paris, 
taking the line of the old fortifications, which are still 
maintained, with a zone following the fortifications most 
of the way just outside, inhabited only by squatters, 
some of whose houses were on wheels ready for "mobili- 
zation" at an hour's notice. (It was near the end of 
that circumvallating journey, about sunset, on the last 
day of an old year, that I saw my first airplane rising 
like a great golden bird in the aviation field, and a few 
minutes later my first elongated dirigible — precursors of 
the air armies). 

I have read that the Scotch once had a custom of 
making a yearly pilgrimage or excursion around their 
boroughs or cities — "beating the bounds," they called 
it, following the boundaries that they might know what 
they had to defend. It is a custom that might profitably 
be revived. We should then know better the cities in 
which we live. We should be stronger, healthier, for 
such expeditions, and the better able and the more 
willing to defend our boundaries. 

But these are the exceptional foot expeditions. For 
most urbanites there is the opportunity for the daily 
walk to and from work, if only they were not tempted 
by the wheel of the street car or motor. During the 
subway strike in New York not long ago I saw able- 
bodied men riding in improvised barges or buses going 
at a slower-than-walking pace, because, I suppose, though 
still possessed of legs, these cliff-dwellers had become 



TRAVELING AFOOT 159 

enslaved by wheels, just like the old mythical Ixion who 
was tied to one. 

I once walked late one afternoon with a man who 
did not know that he could walk, from the Custom-House, 
down near the Battery, to the City College gymnasium, 
138th Street, and what we did (at the rate of a mile 
in about twelve minutes) thousands are as able to do, 
though not perhaps at this pace when the streets are full. 

And what a "preparedness" measure it would be if 
thousands of the young city men would march uptown 
every day after hours, in companies! The swinging 
stride of a companionless avenue walk, on the other 
hand, gives often much of the adventure that one has 
in carrying the ball in a football game. 

Many times when I could not get out of the city for a 
vacation I have walked up Fifth Avenue at the end of 
the day and have half closed my eyes in order to see 
men and women as the blind man saw them when his eyes 
were first touched by the Master — see them as "trees 
walking." 

But the longing of all at times, whether it be an 
atavistic or a cultivated longing, is for the real trees 
and all that goes with them. Immediately there open 
valleys with "pitcher" elms, so graceful that one thinks 
of the famous line from the Odyssey in which Ulysses says 
that once he saw a tree as beautiful as the most beautiful 
woman — valleys with elms, hill-tops with far-signaling 
poplars, mountains with pines, or prairies with their 
groves and orchards. About every city lies an environ- 
ing charm, even if it have no trees, as, for example, 
Cheyenne, Wyoming, where, stopping for a few hours 
not long ago, I spent most of the time walking out to 
the encircling mesas that give view of both mountains 
and city. I have never found a city without its walkers' 
rewards. New York has its Palisade paths, its West- 



160 JOHN FINLEY 

Chester hills and hollows, its "south shore" and "north 
shore," and its Staten Island (which I have often thought 
of as Atlantis, for once on a holiday I took Plato with 
me to spend an afternoon on its littoral, away from the 
noise of the city, and on my way home found that my 
Plato had stayed behind, and he never reappeared, though 
I searched car and boat). Chicago has its miles of lake 
shore walks; Albany, its Helderbergs; and San Fran- 
cisco, its Golden Gate Road. And I recall with a 
pleasure which the war cannot take away a number of 
suburban European walks. One was across the Cam- 
pagna from Frascati to Rome, when I saw an Easter 
week sun go down behind the Eternal City. Another 
was out to Fiesole from Florence and back again; an- 
other, out and up from where the Saone joins the Rhone 
at Lyons; another, from Montesquieu's chateau to Bor- 
deaux; another, from Edinburgh out to Arthur's Seat 
and beyond; another, from Lausanne to Geneva, past 
Paderewski's villa, along the glistening lake with its 
background of Alps; and still another, from Eton (where 
I spent the night in a cubicle looking out on Windsor 
Castle) to London, starting at dawn. One cannot know 
the intimate charm of the urban penumbra who makes 
only shuttle journeys by motor or street cars. 

These are near journeys, but there are times when they 
do not satisfy, when one must set out on a far journey, 
test one's will and endurance of body, or get away 
from the usual. Sometimes the long walk is the only 
medicine. Once when suffering from one of the few colds 
of my life (incurred in California) I walked from the 
rim of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado down to the 
river and back (a distance of fourteen miles, with a 
descent of five thousand feet and a like ascent), and 
found myself entirely cured of the malady which had 
clung to me for days. My first fifty-mile walk years 






TRAVELING AFOOT 161 

ago was begun in despair over a slow recovery from the 
sequelae of diphtheria. 

But most of these far walks have been taken just for 
the joy of walking in the free air. Among these have 
been journeys over Porto Rico (of two hundred miles), 
around Yellowstone Park (of about one hundred and 
fifty miles, making the same stations as the coaches), 
over portages along the waterways following the French 
explorers from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of 
Mexico, and in country roads visiting one-room schools 
in the State of New York and over the boundless 
prairie fields long ago. 

But the walks which I most enjoy, in retrospect at any 
rate, are those taken at night. Then one makes one's 
own landscape with only the help of the moon or stars 
or the distant lights of a city, or with one's unaided 
imagination if the sky is filled with cloud. 

The next better thing to the democracy of a road 
by day is the monarchy of a road by night, when one 
has one's own terrestrial way under guidance of a Provi- 
dence that is nearer. It was in the "cool of the day" 
that the Almighty is pictured as walking in the garden, 
but I have most often met him on the road by night. 

Several times I have walked down Staten Island and 
across New Jersey to Princeton "after dark," the desti- 
nation being a particularly attractive feature of this 
walk. But I enjoy also the journeys that are made 
in strange places where one knows neither the way nor 
the destination, except from a map or the advice of 
signboard or kilometer posts (which one reads by the 
flame of a match, or, where that is wanting, sometimes 
by following the letters and figures on a post with one's 
fingers), or the information, usually inaccurate, of some 
other wayfarer. Most of these journeys have been made 
of a necessity that has prevented my making them by 



1 62 JOHN FINLEY 

day, but I have in every case been grateful afterward for 
the necessity. In this country they have been usually 
among the mountains — the Green Mountains or the 
White Mountains or the Catskills. But of all my night 
faring, a night on the moors of Scotland is the most 
impressive and memorable, though without incident. No 
mountain landscape is to me more awesome than the 
moorlands by night, or more alluring than the moorlands 
by day when the heather is in bloom. Perhaps this 
is only the ancestors speaking again. 

But something besides ancestry must account for the 
others. Indeed, in spite of it, I was drawn one night 
to Assisi, where St. Francis had lived. Late in the 
evening I started on to Foligno in order to take a train 
in to Rome for Easter morning. I followed a white 
road that wound around the hills, through silent clusters 
of cottages tightly shut up with only a slit of light 
visible now and then, meeting not a human being along 
the way save three somber figures accompanying an ox 
cart, a man at the head of the oxen and a man and a 
woman at the tail of the cart — a theme for Millet. 
(I asked in broken Italian how far it was to Foligno, 
and the answer was, "Una hora" — distance in time and 
not in miles.) Off in the night I could see the lights 
of Perugia, and some time after midnight I began to see 
the lights of Foligno — of Perugia and Foligno, where 
Raphael had wandered and painted. The adventure of 
it all was that when I reached Foligno I found it was 
a walled town, that the gate was shut, and that I had 
neither passport nor intelligible speech. There is an 
interesting walking sequel to this journey. I carried 
that night a wooden water-bottle, such as the Italian 
soldiers used to carry, filling it from the fountain at the 
gate of Assisi before starting. Just a month later, under 
the same full moon, I was walking between midnight 



TRAVELING AFOOT 163 

and morning in New Hampshire. I had the same water- 
bottle and stopped at a spring to fill it. When I turned 
the bottle upside down, a few drops of water from the 
fountain of Assisi fell into the New England spring, 
which for me, at any rate, has been forever sweetened 
by this association. 

All my long night walks seem to me now as but 
preparation for one which I was obliged to make at the 
outbreak of the war in Europe. I had crossed the 
Channel from England to France, on the day that war 
was declared by England, to get a boy of ten years out 
of the war zone. I got as far by rail as a town between 
Arras and Amiens, where I expected to take a train on 
a branch road toward Dieppe; but late in the after- 
noon I was informed that the scheduled train had been 
canceled and that there might not be another for twenty- 
four hours, if then. Automobiles were not to be had 
even if I had been able to pay for one. So I set out at 
dusk on foot toward Dieppe, which was forty miles or 
more distant. The experiences of that night would in 
themselves make one willing to practice walking for 
years in order to be able to walk through such a night 
in whose dawn all Europe waked to war. There was the 
quiet, serious gathering of the soldiers at the place of 
rendezvous; there were the all-night preparations of the 
peasants along the way to meet the new conditions; 
there was the pelting storm from which I sought shelter 
in the niches for statues in the walls of an abandoned 
chateau; there was the clatter of the hurrying feet of 
soldiers or gendarmes who properly arrested the wan- 
derer, searched him, took him to a guard-house, and 
detained him until certain that he was an American 
citizen and a friend of France, when he was let go on 
his way with a bon voyage; there was the never-to-be- 
forgotten dawn upon the harvest fields in which only 



1 64 JOHN FINLEY 

old men, women, and children were at work; there was 
the gathering of the peasants with commandeered horses 
and carts in the beautiful park on the water-front at 
Dieppe; and there was much besides; but they were 
experiences for the most part which only one on foot 
could have had. 

And the moral of my whole story is that walking is 
not only a joy in itself, but that it gives an intimacy 
with the sacred things and the primal things of earth 
that are not revealed to those who rush by on wheels. 

I have wished to organize just one more club — the 
"Holy Earth" club, with the purposes that Liberty 
Bailey has set forth in his book of the same title {The 
Holy Earth), but I should admit to membership in it 
(except for special reasons) only those who love to walk 
upon the earth. 

Traveling afoot! This is the best posture in which 
to worship the God of the Out-of-Doors! 



OLD BOATS 1 
Walter Prichard Eaton 

Anything which man has hewn from stone or shaped 
from wood, put to the uses of his pleasure or his toil, 
and then at length abandoned to crumble slowly back 
into its elements of soil or metal, is fraught for the 
beholder with a wistful appeal, whether it be the pyra- 
mids of Egyptian kings, or an abandoned farmhouse on 
the road to Moosilauke, or only a rusty hay-rake in a 
field now overgrown with golden-rod and Queen Anne's 
lace, and fast surrendering to the returning tide of the 
forest. A pyramid may thrill us by its tremendousness; 
we may dream how once the legions of Mark Antony 
encamped below it, how the eagles of Napoleon went 
tossing past. But in the end we shall reflect on the 
toiling slaves who built it, block upon heavy block, to 
be a monarch's tomb, and on the monarch who now lies 
beneath (if his mummy has not been transferred to the 
British Museum). The old gray house by the roadside, 
abandoned, desolate, with a bittersweet vine entwined 
around the chimney and a raspberry bush pushing up 
through the rotted doorsill, takes us back to the days 
when the pioneer's axe rang in this clearing, hewing the 
timbers for beam and rafter, and the smoke of the first 
fire went up that ample flue. How many a time have 
I paused in my tramping to poke around such a ruin, 

1 From Green Trails and Upland Pastures, by Walter Prichard 
Eaton. Copyright, 191 7, by Doubleday, Page & Co. By per- 
mission of the author and of the publishers. 

165 



1 66 WALTER PRICHARD EATON 

reconstructing the vanished life of a day when the 
cities had not sucked our hill towns dry and this scrubby 
wilderness was a productive farm! 

The motor cars go through the Berkshires in steady 
procession by the valley highways, past great estates 
betokening our changed civilization. But the back roads 
of Berkshire are known to few, and you may tramp all 
the morning over the Beartown Mountain plateau, by a 
road where the green grass grows between the ruts, 
without meeting a motor, or indeed, a vehicle of any 
sort. A century ago Beartown was a thriving com- 
munity, producing many thousand dollars' worth of 
grain, maple sugar, wool, and mutton. To-day there are 
less than half a dozen families left, and they survive 
by cutting cord wood from the sheep pastures! We 
must haul our wool from the Argentine, and our mutton 
from Montana, while our own land goes back to un- 
productive wilderness. As the road draws near the 
long hill down into Monterey, there stands a ruined 
house beside it, one of many ruins you will have passed, 
the plaster in heaps on the floor, the windows gone, 
the door half fallen from its long, hand-wrought hinges. 
It is a house built around a huge central chimney, 
which seems still as solid as on the day it was com- 
pleted. The rotted mantels were simply wrought, but 
with perfect lines, and the panelling above them was 
extremely good. So was the delicate fanlight over the 
door, in which a bit of glass still clings, iridescent now 
like oil on water. Under the eaves the carpenter had 
indulged in a Greek border, and over the woodshed 
opening behind he had spanned a keystone arch. Peer- 
ing into this shed, under the collapsing roof, you see 
what is left of an axe embedded in a pile of reddish vege- 
table mould, which was once the chopping block. Peer- 
ing through the windows of the house, you see a few 






OLD BOATS 167 

bits of simple furniture still inhabiting the ruined rooms. 
Just outside, in the door-yard, the day lilies, run wild 
in the grass, speak to you of a housewife's hand across 
the vanished years. The barn has gone completely, 
overthrown and wiped out by the advancing forest edge. 
Enough of the clearing still remains, however, to show 
where the cornfields and the pastures lay. They are wild 
with berry stalks and flowers now, still and vacant under 
the Summer sun. 

The ruins of war are melancholy, and raise our bitter 
resentment. Yet how often we pass such an abandoned 
farm as this without any realization that it, too, is a 
ruin of war, the ceaseless war of commercial greed. No 
less surely than in stricken Belgium has there been a 
deportation here. Factories and cities have swallowed 
up a whole population, indeed, along the Beartown road. 
It is easy to say that they went willingly, that they 
preferred the life of cities; that the dreary tenement 
under factory grime, with a "movie" theatre around the 
corner, is an acceptable substitute to them for the ample 
fireplaces, the fanlight door, the rolling fields and road- 
side brook. We hear much discussion in New England 
to-day of "how to keep the young folks on the farm." 
But why should they stay on the farm, to toil and 
starve, in body and mind? We have so organized our 
whole society on a competitive commercial basis that 
they can now do nothing else. Those ancient apple trees 
beside the ruined house once grew fruit superior in taste 
to any apple which ever came from Hood River or Wenat- 
chee, and could grow it again; but greed has determined 
that our cities shall pay five cents apiece for the 
showy western product, and the small individual grower 
of the East is helpless. We have raised individualism 
to a creed, and killed the individual. We have exalted 
"business," and depopulated our farms. The old gray 



168 WALTER PRICHARD EATON 

ruin on the back road to Monterey is an epitome of our 
history for a hundred years. 

But to pursue such reflections too curiously would take 
our mind from the road, our eyes from the wild flower 
gardens lining the way — the banks of blueberries fra- 
grant in the sun, the stately borders of meadow rue where 
the grassy track dips down through a moist hollow. And 
to pursue such reflections too curiously would take us 
far afield from the spot we planned to reach when we 
took up our pen for this particular journey. That spot 
was the bit of sandy lane, just in front of Cap'n Brad- 
ley's house in old South County, Rhode Island. The 
lane leads down from the colonial Post Road to the shore 
of the Salt Pond, and the Cap'n's house is the first one 
on the left after you leave the road. The second house 
on the left is inhabited by Miss Maria Mills. The third 
house on the left is the Big House, where they take 
boarders. The Big House is on the shore of the Salt 
Pond. There are no houses on the right of the lane, 
only fields full of bay and huckleberries. The lane runs 
right out on a small pier and apparently jumps off the 
end into whatever boat is moored there, where it hides 
away in the hold, waiting to be taken on a far journey 
to the yellow line of the ocean beach, or the flag-marked 
reaches of the oyster bars. It is a delightful, leisurely 
little lane, a byway into another order from the modern- 
ized macadam Post Road where the motors whiz. You 
go down a slight incline to the Cap'n's house, and the 
motors are shut out from your vision. From here you 
can glimpse the dancing water of the Salt Pond, and 
smell it too, when the wind is south, carrying the odour 
of gasolene the other way. The Cap'n's house is 
painted brown, a little, brown dwelling with a blue-legged 
sailor man on poles in the dooryard, revolving in the 
breeze. The Cap'n is a little brown man, for that 



OLD BOATS 169 

matter. He is reconciled to a life ashore by his pipe 
and his pension, and by his lookout built of weathered 
timber on a grass-covered sand drift just abaft the 
kitchen door, whither he betakes himself with his spy 
glass on clear days to see whether it is his old friend 
Cap'n Perry down there on number two oyster bar, or 
how heavy the traffic is to-day far out beyond the yellow 
beach line, where Block Island rises like a blue mirage. 
Cap'n Bradley boasts a garden, too. It is just across 
the lane from his front door. There are three varieties 
of flowers in it — nasturtiums, portulacas, and bright 
red geraniums. The portulacas grow around the border, 
then come the nasturtiums, and finally the taller gerani- 
ums in the centre. The Cap'n has never seen nor 
heard of those ridiculous wooden birds on green shafts 
which it is now the fashion to stick up in flower beds, 
but he has something quite appropriate, and, all things 
considered, quite as "artistic." In the bow of his garden, 
astride a spar, is a blue-legged sailor man ten inches 
tall, keeping perpetual lookout up the lane. For this 
flower bed is planted in an old dory filled with earth. She 
had outlived her usefulness down there in the Salt Pond, 
or even, it may be, out on the blue sea itself, but no 
vandal hands were laid upon her to stave her up for 
kindling wood. Instead, the Captain himself painted 
her a bright yellow, set her down in front of his dwelling, 
and filled her full of flowers. She is disintegrating 
slowly; already, after a rain, the muddy water trickles 
through her side and stains the yellow paint. But what 
a pretty and peaceful process! She might not strike 
you as a happy touch set down in one of those formal 
gardens depicted in The House Beautiful or Country 
Life, but here beside the salty lane past Cap'n Bradley's 
door, gaudy in colour, with her load of homely flowers 
and her quaint little sailor man astride his spar above 



1 7 o WALTER PRICHARD EATON 

the bright geraniums, she is perfect. No boat could 
come to a better end. She's taking portulacas to the 
Islands of the Blest! 

Miss Maria Mills, in the next house, never followed 
the sea, and her idea of a garden is more conventional. 
She grows hollyhocks beside the house, and sweet peas 
on her wire fence. But at the lane's end, where the 
water of the Salt Pond laps the pier, you may see 
another old boat put to humbler uses, now that its sea- 
faring days are over, and uses sometimes no less romantic 
than the Cap'n's garden. It is a flat-bottomed boat, 
and lies bottom side up just above the little beach made 
by the lap of the waves, for the tide does not affect the 
Salt Pond back here three miles from the outlet. The 
paint has nearly gone from this aged craft, though a few 
flakes of green still cling under the gunwales. But in 
place of paint there have appeared an incredible num- 
ber of initials, carved with every degree of skill or 
clumsiness, over bottom and sides. This boat is the 
bench whereon you wait for the launch to carry you 
down the Pond, for the catboat or thirty- footer to be 
brought in from her moorings, for Cap'n Perry to land 
with a load of oysters; or it is the bench you sit upon 
to watch the sunset glow behind the pines on the oppo- 
site headland, the pines where the blue herons roost, or 
to see the moon track on the dancing water. The Post 
Road is alive with motors now, far into the evening. 
You get your mail from the little post office beside it 
as quickly as possible — which isn't very quickly, to 
be sure, for we do not hurry in South County, even when 
we are employed by Uncle Sam — and then you turn 
down the quiet lane, past the Cap'n's garden, toward 
the lap of quiet water and the salty smell. Affairs of 
State are now discussed, of a summer evening, upon the 
bottom of this upturned boat, while a case knife dulled 



OLD BOATS 171 

by oyster shells picks out a new initial. And when the 
fate of the nation is settled, or to-morrow's weather 
thoroughly discussed (the two are of about equal im- 
portance to us in South County, with the balance in 
favour of the weather), and the debaters have departed 
to bed, some of them leaving by water with a rattle 
of tackle or, more often in these degenerate days, the 
put, put of an unmuffled exhaust, then other figures come 
to the upturned boat, speaking softly or not at all, and 
in the morning you may, perhaps, find double initials 
freshly cut, with a circle sentimentally enclosing them. 
So the old craft passes her last days beside the lapping 
water, a pleasant and useful end. 

On the other side of the Big House from the pier, at 
the head of a tiny dredged inlet, there is an old boat- 
house. It seems but yesterday that we used to warp 
the Idler in there when summer was over, get the chains 
under her, and block her up for the winter. She spent 
the winter on one side of the slip ; the Sea Mist, a clumsy 
craft that couldn't stir short of a half gale, spent the 
winter on the other side. Over them, on racks, the 
rowboats were slung. There was a larger boathouse 
for the big fellows. What busy days we spent in Ma}' 
or June, caulking and scraping and painting, splicing and 
repairing, making the little Idler ready for the sea again! 
She was an eighteen-foot cat, a bit of a tub, I fear, but 
the best on the Pond in her day, eating up close into 
the wind, sensitive, alert, with a pair of white heels 
she had shown to many a larger craft. Surely it was 
but yesterday that I rowed out to her where she was 
moored a hundred feet from shore, climbed aboard, 
hoisted sail, and, with my pipe drawing sweetly, sat 
down beside the tiller and played out the sheet till the 
sail filled; there was a crack and snaffle of straining 
tackle, the boat leaped forward, the tiller batted my ribs, 



172 WALTER PRICHARD EATON 

the Idler heeled over, and then quietly, softly, as 
rhythmic as a song, the water raced hissing along her 
rail, the little waves slapped beneath her bow — and the 
world was good to be alive in! Surely it was but yes- 
terday that the white sail of the Idler was like a gulPs 
wing on the Pond! 

But the white sail wings are few on the Pond to-day, 
and the Idler lies on her side in the weeds behind the 
boathouse. She had to make room for the motor craft. 
She is too bulky for a flower bed, too convex for a bench. 
Her paint is nearly gone now, both the yellow body 
colour and the pretty green and white stripe along her 
rail that we used to put on with such care. Her seams 
are yawning, and the rain water pool that at first settled 
on the low side of her cockpit has now seeped through, 
and a little deposit of soil has accumulated, in which 
a sickly weed is growing. Poor old Idler! One day I 
got an axe, resolved to break her up, but when it came 
to the point of burying the first blow my resolution failed. 
I thought of all the hours of enthusiastic labour I had 
spent upon those eighteen feet of oak ribs and planking; 
I thought of all the thrilling hours of the race, when 
we had squeezed her into the wind past Perry's Point 
and saved a precious tack; I thought of the dreamy hours 
when she had borne us down the Pond in the summer 
sunshine, or through the gray, mysterious fog, or under 
the stars above the black water. So instead, I laid my 
hand gently on her rotting tiller, and then took the axe 
back to the woodshed. She will never ride the waves 
again, but she shall dissolve into her elements peace- 
fully, in sight of the salt water, in the quiet grass behind 
the boathouse. 

It seems to me that all my life I have had memories of 
old boats. One of my earliest recollections is of Old 
Ironsides, in the Charlestown Navy Yard, dismantled 



OLD BOATS 173 

and decked over, but saved from destruction by Dr. 
Holmes's poem. What thrilling visions it awoke to climb 
aboard her and tread her decks! Acres of spinnaker and 
topgallants broke out aloft, cannon boomed, smoke 
rolled, "grape and canister" flew through the air, chain 
shot came hurtling, and the Stars and Stripes waved 
through it all, triumphant. The white ironclads out in 
the channel (for in those days they were white) evoked 
no such visions. Another memory is of a childhood trip 
to New Bedford and a long walk for hours by the 
water front, out on green and rotting piers where chunky, 
square-rigged whalers, green and rotting, too, were 
moored alongside. The life of the whaler was in those 
days something infinitely fascinating to us boys. We 
read of the chase, the hurling of the harpoon, the mad 
ride over the waves towed by the plunging monster. 
And here were the very ships which had taken the brave 
whalers to the hunting grounds, here on their decks were 
some of the whale boats which had been towed over the 
churned and blood-flecked sea! Why should they be 
green and rotting now? They produced upon me an 
impression of infinite sadness. It seemed as if a great 
hand had suddenly wiped a romantic bloom off my 
vision of the world. 

But it was not long after that I knew the romance of 
a launching. It was at Kennebunkport in Maine. All 
summer the ship yards on either side of the river, close 
to the little town and under the very shadow of the 
white meeting house steeple, had rung with the blows 
of axe and hammer. The great ribs rose into place, the 
sheathing went on, the decks were laid, the masts stepped; 
finally the first rigging was adjusted. After the work- 
men left in the late afternoon, we boys swarmed over 
the ships — three-masters, smelling deliciously of new 
wood and caulking, and played we were sailors. When 



174 WALTER PRICHARD EATON 

the rope ladders were finally in place, we raced up and 
down them, sitting in the crow's nest on a line with the 
church weather vane, and pretending to reef the sails. 
It was an event when the ships were launched. The 
tide was at the flood, gay canoes filled the stream along 
both banks, hundreds of people massed on the shore. 
A little girl stood in the bow with a bottle of wine on 
a string. An engine tooted, cables creaked, and down 
the greased way slid the ship, with a dip and a heave 
when she hit the water that made big waves on either 
side and set the canoes to rocking madly, while the crowd 
cheered and shouted. After the launching, the schooners 
were towed out to sea, and down the coast, to be fitted 
elsewhere. We boys followed them in canoes as far as 
the breakwater, and watched them disappear. Soon their 
sails would be set, and they would join the white ad- 
venturers out there on the world rim. 

Where are they now, I wonder? Are they still buffet- 
ing the seas, or do they lie moored and outmoded beside 
some green wharf, their days of usefulness over? I 
remember hoping, as I watched them pass out to sea, 
that they would not share the fate of the unknown craft 
which lay buried in the sands a mile down the coast. 
It was said that she came ashore in the " Great Storm" 
of 1814 (or thereabouts). Nothing was left of her 
in our day but her sturdy ribs, which thrust up a few 
feet above the sand, outlining her shape, and were only 
visible at low water. On a stormy day, when the seas 
were high, I used to stand at the head of the beach 
and try to picture how she drove up on the shore, 
shuddering deliciously as each great wave came pounding 
down on all that was left of her oaken frame. When I 
read in the newspaper of a wreck I thought of her, and 
I think of her to this day on such occasions, thrusting 
up black and dripping ribs above the wet sands at low 



OLD BOATS 1 75 

water, or vanishing beneath the pounding foam of the 
breakers. 

If you take the shore line train from Boston to New 
York, you pass through a sleepy old town in Connecticut 
where a spur track with rusty rails runs out to the 
wharves, and moored to these wharves are side-wheel 
steamers which once plied the Sound. It served some- 
body's purpose or pocket better to discontinue the line, 
and with its cessation and the cessation of work in the 
ship yards close by, the old town passed into a state 
of salty somnolence. The harbour is glassy and still, 
opening out to the blue waters of the Sound. Still are 
the white steamers by the wharves, where once the gang 
planks shook with the tread of feet and the rumble 
of baggage trucks. Many a time, as the train paused 
at the station, I have watched the black stacks for some 
hint of smoke, hoping against hope that I should see the 
old ship move, and turn, and go about her rightful 
seafaring. But it was never to be. There were only 
ghosts in engine room and pilot house. Like the 
abandoned dwelling on the upland road to Monterey, 
these steamers were mute witnesses to a vanished order. 
But always as the train pulled out from the station I 
sat on the rear platform and watched the white town 
and the white steamers and the glassy harbour slip back- 
ward into the haze — and it seemed as if that haze was 
the gentle breath of oblivion. 

I live inland now, far from the smell of salt water 
and the sight of sails. Yet sometimes there comes over 
me a longing for the sea as irresistible as the lust for 
salt which stampedes the reindeer of the north. I must 
gaze on the unbroken world- rim, I must feel the sting 
of spray, I must hear the rhythmic crash and roar of 
breakers and watch the sea-weed rise and fall where the 
green waves lift against the rocks. Once in so often 



176 



WALTER PRICHARD EATON 



I must ride those waves with cleated sheet and tugging 
tiller, and hear the soft hissing song of the water on the 
rail. And "my day of mercy" is not complete till I 
have seen some old boat, her seafaring done, heeled over 
on the beach or amid the fragrant sedges, a mute and 
wistful witness to the romance of the deep, the blue 
and restless deep where man has adventured in craft 
his hands have made since the earliest sun of history, and 
whereon he will adventure, ardently and insecure, till 
the last syllable of recorded time. 



ZEPPELINITIS 1 
Philip Littell 

Much reading of interviews with returning travellers 
who had almost seen Zeppelins over London, and of wire- 
less messages from other travellers who had come even 
nearer seeing the great sight, had made me, I suppose, 
morbidly desirous of escape from a city where other such 
travellers were presumably at large. However that may 
be, when Mrs. Watkin asked me to spend Sunday at her 
place in the country, I broke an old habit and said I'd 
go. When last I had visited her house she worshipped 
success in the arts, and her recipe was to have a few 
successes to talk and a lot of us unsuccessful persons to 
listen. At that time her aesthetic was easy to under- 
stand. "Every great statue," she said, "is set up in 
a public place. Every great picture brings a high price. 
Every great book has a large sale. That is what great- 
ness in art means." Her own brand of talk was not in 
conflict with what she would have called her then creed. 
She never said a thing was very black. She never said 
it was as black as the ace of spades. She always said 
it was as black as the proverbial ace of spades. Once I 
ventured to insinuate that perhaps it would be more 
nobly new to say "as black as the proverbial ace of 
proverbial spades," but the suggestion left her at peace 
with her custom. Well, when I got to her house last 
week, and had a chance to scrutinize the others, they 

1 Reprinted by permission from Books and Things, by Philip 
Littell. Copyright iqiq, by Harcourt, Brace and Howe, Inc. 

177 



178 PHILIP LITTELL 

did not look as if she had chosen them after any particu- 
lar pattern. 

Dinner, however, soon enabled us all to guess the 
model from which Mrs. Watkin had striven to copy 
her occasion. I was greatly relishing the conversation 
of my left-hand neighbor, a large-eyed, wondering-eyed 
woman, who said little and seemed never to have heard 
any of the things I usually say when dining out, and 
who I dare swear would have looked gratefully surprised 
had I confided to her my discovery that in the begin- 
ning God created the heaven and the earth. Before 
we were far gone with food the attention of this tactful 
person was torn from me by our hostess, whose voice was 
heard above the other voices: "Oh, Mr. Slicer, do tell 
us your experience. I want all our friends to hear it." 
Mr. Slicer, identifiable by the throat-clearing look which 
suffused his bleached, conservative face, was not deaf to 
her appeal. He had just returned from London, where 
he had been at the time of the Zeppelin raid, and al- 
though he had not himself been so fortunate as to see a 
Zeppelin, but had merely been a modest witness of the 
sporting fortitude with which London endured that visita- 
tion, the Zeppelin-in-chief had actually been visible to 
the brother of his daughter's governess. "At the noise 
of guns," said Mr. Slicer, "we all left the restaurant 
where we were dining, Mrs. Humphry Ward, George 
Moore, Asquith, Miss Pankhurst and I, and walked, 
not ran, into the street, where it was the work of a 
moment for me to climb a lamp-post, whence I obtained 
a nearer view of what was going on overhead. Nothing 
there but blackness." Instinctively I glanced at Mrs. 
Watkin, upon whose lips the passage of words like "as 
the proverbial ace of spades" was clearly to be seen. 
"Of course," Mr. Slicer went on, "I couldn't indefinitely 
hold my coign of vantage, which I relinquished in favor 



ZEPPELINITIS 179 

of Mrs. Humphry Ward, to whom at her laughing re- 
quest George Moore and I gave a leg up. She remained 
there a few moments, one foot on my shoulder and one 
on Sir Edward Carson's — she is not a light woman — 
and then we helped her down, Asquith and I. When I 
got back to my lodgings in Half-Moon Street I found 
that the governess's brother, who had been lucky enough 
to see a Zeppelin, had gone home. I shall not soon for- 
get my experience." This narrative was wonderful to 
my left-hand neighbor. It made her feel as if she had 
really been there and seen it all with her own eyes. 

Mr. Mullinger, who was the next speaker on Mrs. 
Watkin's list, and who had returned from Europe on the 
same boat with Mr. Sheer, had had a different experi- 
ence. On the evening of the raid he was in a box 
at the theatre where Guitry, who had run over from Paris, 
was appearing in the little role of Pkedre, when the noise 
of firing was heard above the alexandrines of Racine. 
"With great presence of mind," so Mr. Mullinger told 
us, "Guitry came down stage, right, and said in quizzi- 
cal tone to us: 'Eh bien, chere petite folle et vieux 
marcheur, just run up to the roof, will you please, and 
tell us what it's all about, don't you know.' The Princess 
and I stood up and answered in the same tone, 'Right-o, 
mon vieux' and were aboard the lift in no time. From 
the roof we could see nothing, and as it was raining and 
we had no umbrellas, we of course didn't stay. When 
we got back I stepped to the front of the box and said: 
'The Princess and Mr. Mullinger beg to report that on 
the roof it is raining rain.' The words were nothing, 
if you like, but I spoke them just like that, with a 
twinkle in my eye, and perhaps it was that twinkle which 
reassured the house and started a roar of laughter. The 
performance went on as if nothing remarkable had 
happened. Wonderfully poised, the English." And this 



180 PHILIP LITTELL 

narrative, too, was so fortunate as to satisfy my left-hand 
neighbor. It made her feel as if she had been there her- 
self, and heard all these wonderful things with her own 
ears. 

After that, until near the end of dinner, it was all 
Zeppelins, and I hope I convey to everyone within sound 
of my voice something of my own patriotic pride in a 
country whose natives when abroad among foreigners 
consort so freely and easily with the greatest of these. 
No discordant note was heard until the very finish, 
when young Puttins, who as everybody knows has not 
been further from New York than Asbury Park all sum- 
mer, told us that on the night of the raid he too had 
been in London, where his only club was the Athenaeum. 
When the alarm was given he was in the Athenaeum 
pool with Mr. Hall Caine, in whose company it has for 
years been his custom to take a good-night swim. 
"Imagine my alarm," young Puttins continued, "when 
I saw emerging from the surface of the waters, and not 
five yards away from the person of my revered master, 
a slender object which I at once recognized as a minia- 
ture periscope. I shouted to my companion. In vain. 
Too late. A slim fountain spurted fountain-high above 
the pool, a dull report was heard, and the next instant 
Mr. Hall Caine had turned turtle and was sinking rapidly 
by the bow. When dressed I hastened to notify the 
authorities. The pool was drained by noon of the next 
day but one. We found nothing except, near the bottom 
of the pool, the commencement of a tunnel large enough 
for the ingress and egress of one of those tiny sub- 
mersibles the credit for inventing which neither Mr. 
Henry Ford nor Professor Parker ever tires of giving 
the other. I have since had reason to believe that not 
one swimming-pool in Great Britain is secure against 



I 



ZEPPELINITIS 181 

visits from these miniature pests. Indeed, I may say, 
without naming any names," . . . but at this moment 
Mrs. Watkin interrupted young Puttins by taking the 
ladies away. She looked black as the proverbial. 
October, 19 15. 



